Forward Deployed Engineer

For 50 years, RO Writer has helped independent auto repair shops across North America run smarter, faster, and more profitably. Our all-in-one, now cloud-based shop management platform covers service writing, parts catalogs, digital vehicle inspections, inventory, accounting, and customer communication, and thousands of shops depend on it every day.

For 50 years, RO Writer has helped independent auto repair shops across North America run smarter, faster, and more profitably. Our all-in-one, now cloud-based shop management platform covers service writing, parts catalogs, digital vehicle inspections, inventory, accounting, and customer communication, and thousands of shops depend on it every day. We're now bringing AI into the bays and the front counter, starting with RO Writer Connect, our AI-powered marketing automation.

The next step is putting AI to work on the daily workflows that eat up a shop's time.

We're hiring our first Forward Deployed Engineer. You'll work side by side with shop owners, service advisors, and technicians to find the problems slowing them down, then build AI solutions that fix them. You'll spend your time in the shop and in the code. What works in the field becomes part of the product.

You'll report to our General Manager and help define what this function becomes at RO Writer.

Automating repair order creation, using AI to turn inspections, technician notes, and customer conversations into accurate, ready-to-review repair orders and estimates.

• Embed with customers, remotely and on-site, to understand how their shops really run and where time and revenue are lost
• Identify high-impact workflow problems and turn them into scoped, shippable solutions
• Design, build, and deploy AI-powered workflows and agents (LLMs, RAG, tool use) that automate shop tasks such as repair order writing, estimating, and parts sourcing
• Integrate with RO Writer's platform and third-party systems (parts catalogs, accounting, payments, and more) through APIs
• Build evaluation and monitoring so AI output is accurate, grounded, and trustworthy enough for a shop to rely on
• Run pilots with customers, gather feedback, and iterate quickly
• Partner with Product and Engineering to turn successful field solutions into scalable product features
• Document what you learn and build playbooks so Support, Training, and Customer Success teams can carry it forward
• Be the voice of the customer inside engineering

• Professional software engineering experience, with Vue and .Net
• Hands-on experience building with LLMs: prompt design, agents or tool use, RAG, and evaluating output quality
• The ability to explain the AI-driven development methods that have actually worked for you over the past 18 months: how you plan, build, test, and ship software with AI, and what you'd do differently
• Experience working in small teams to produce applications and modules that improved or simplified end-user workflows
• A track record you can express in results: end-user benefit, financial impact, and quantitative measures (time saved, cost reduced, revenue gained, adoption)
• Strong experience building and consuming APIs and integrating with third-party systems
• Excellent communication skills. You can explain technical ideas to non-technical shop owners and listen well.
• Comfort with ambiguity: you can take a messy real-world problem to a working solution with little hand-holding
• Willingness to travel periodically to customer shops

• Experience in automotive, auto repair, or small-business / vertical SaaS
• Experience in a customer-facing technical role (solutions engineering, implementation, technical consulting)
• Familiarity with cloud platforms and modern deployment practices
• Experience using AI coding tools in your daily work

you've ever shown up at a customer's workplace, watched how they actually work, and gone home to build something better.

• Be the first in a brand-new function with direct access to leadership
• Work on a product with a 50-year legacy and real customers who feel your impact immediately
• Build AI that solves tangible problems for small business owners, not demos
• Remote-first

Exempt

The estimated base salary range for this role is USD$ - USD$ per year. We include salary ranges in job postings only where required by applicable pay transparency laws, based on the…