Founding Field Engineer – Public-Safety Tech, On-Site

Department
:
Information Technology,
Type: Full Time

Job Title:
Founding Forward-Deployed Engineer (YC-backed public safety startup) w/ 0.20% - 1.00% Equity x2 Job Location: NYC (Preferred) or SF Hybrid - (25-50% Travel Due to Customers being in Law Enforcement)
Job Duration:
Full-Time Permanent
Salary: $85,000 - $140,000/Year
Relocation Assistance:
No
Visa Sponsorship:
No

Job Overview
As a founding Forward-Deployed Engineer, you will operate at the vital intersection of product development, full-stack engineering, and field operations.
You will embed directly with detectives, analysts, and prosecutors to observe their workflows firsthand, identifying exactly where evidence review slows down investigations.
Your primary objective is to apply your engineering skills to real-world problems by deploying a sophisticated platform that transcribes, searches, and analyzes massive volumes of digital evidence.
This role requires a high-ownership operator who is comfortable building things that do not scale, such as custom integrations or scrappy fixes, to unblock customers today while simultaneously translating those field insights into a long-term product roadmap.
You will ship production-ready features across the full stack using Python, React, Type Script, and various AI/ML APIs to make evidence search faster and more reliable.
Success in this role demands at least three years of professional software engineering experience and a proven ability to communicate technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders in law enforcement.
Because you will own pilots end-to-end, you must be prepared to travel between 25% and 75% of the time to customer sites across the United States.
By turning messy real-world requirements into clear technical decisions, you will bridge the gap between complex digital case files and the delivery of accurate, fair justice.
Responsibilities:
This is a founding Forward-Deployed Engineer role. You sit at the intersection of product, engineering, and the field. You'll embed directly with detectives, analysts, and prosecutors, learn their workflows, and use that context to deploy Closure's platform and shape the roadmap.
Live with users.
Apply your engineering skills to real-world user problems, directly with the people who use the product.
Spend significant time on-site with law-enforcement customers — watching how they investigate cases and where evidence review slows them down.
Solve pre-scale problems. You're a strong engineer who's comfortable building things that don't scale — one-off analyses, custom integrations, scrappy fixes that unblock a customer today.
Deploy and configure Closure for new agencies, load and validate data, and make sure investigators can rely on it every day.
Turn customer pain into product. Translate what you see in the field into concrete product ideas, then partner closely with the founders to ship them.
You're an executor who turns user pain into PRs (or into a clear understanding of what we need to build next). Ship full-stack features.
Build in Python, React, Type Script, and AI/ML APIs — from new workflows in the UI to backend improvements that make evidence search faster and more reliable.
Own pilots end to end. Run deployments, training sessions, and rollouts so new departments can adopt
Closure smoothly. Act as the trusted technical partner for investigators and leadership teams.

Qualifications:
Engineering Background: 3+ years of full-stack software engineering experience shipping production features Strong proficiency in Python and a modern frontend stack (Type Script/React or similar)
Experience building on top of AI/ML APIs (OpenAI, Anthropic, or similar)
Comfortable working across the stack — frontend UI to backend services
Customer-Facing Experience Prior…