Forward Deploy AI Engineer

San Francisco, CA
· On-site
· Full-time
Compensation: $200,000–$300,000 + 0.1%–0.2% equity

An AI infrastructure company building tools to monitor and evaluate how AI agents behave in production — surfacing failures like hallucinations, drift, and bad decisions in real time, and turning real usage data into scoring and feedback loops that continuously improve agent reliability and performance dreds of teams building autonomous agents rely on the platform to understand how their systems behave after deployment.

Backed by $30M+ raised across two rounds in the past five months. Team of under 20, shipping at high velocity.

Industry: AI infrastructure / observability / agent tooling

A Forward‑Deployed AI Engineer who embeds the platform directly into customers' production systems — integrating monitoring and evaluation into real agent workflows, diagnosing failures in live environments, and driving deployments to reliable production use. This is deep technical execution paired with customer ownership: the scope, judgment, and autonomy mirror what it takes to found or lead a technical company. Heavily customer‑facing, with communication as critical as engineering depth.

What you'll be doing

• Deploy and embed the platform and AI components directly into customer codebases and production AI systems
• Work inside customer systems to integrate monitoring, evaluation, and agent‑facing components into real workflows
• Guide customers through technical decisions around agent monitoring, evaluation strategy, and integration into existing production systems
• Own multiple customer engagements end‑to‑end, ensuring successful integration and sustained adoption
• Translate customer feedback into roadmap input

Tech stack: Full‑stack with backend/infra weight; production AI / LLM‑based systems

• 3-7 years of software engineering experience, with strong product‑engineering ability that ships features end to end inside customer codebases
• Some form of applied AI experience (AI‑adjacent exposure welcome; a strong engineer is preferred over a pure solutions hire)
• Strong customer‑facing communication skills: explains complex technical concepts clearly, builds trust with technical and non‑technical stakeholders
• Comfort deploying AI or LLM‑based systems into real production environments
• Ability to translate ambiguous customer goals into concrete technical solutions
• The Forward‑Deployed Engineer role is their genuine first choice, not a fallback for another role
• Based in SF or willing to relocate; 5 days in person
• Wants to be a technical founder in the future

• Strong software engineering background from a solid product company (e.g. Roblox, Snapchat, Tesla; Databricks-tier a bonus)
• Experience deploying AI or LLM‑based systems to production
• Background from infrastructure/observability companies (e.g. Databricks, Datadog, Cognition)
• 4-5+ years of engineering experience (stronger performance and comms); strong juniors still welcome case‑by‑case
• Genuinely set on the FDE role as their first choice
• Technical background (e.g. coding competitions, research experience) in addition to solutions experience

• FDE is a fallback, not their top choice ("if I can't get X, I'll do FDE")
• Big‑tech candidates using FDE as a backup while angling for another role
• Pure FDE/solutions background without real software engineering depth (strong on paper but below the technical bar)
• Failed founder who built the exact product but lacks the prestige/pedigree bar (adds noise and variance)
• Low commitment signals: slow to book or drops off before the interview
• Over‑indexed on agent experience at the expense of engineering quality

• A founder training ground: own customer engagements end to end with the scope and autonomy of founding a technical company
• Deep technical work paired with real customer ownership at a fast‑moving, well‑funded team
• Top‑of‑band comp, equity, full benefits, Equinox membership, private chef, and direct influence on the product roadmap

• Location:
  
  San Francisco, CA
• Work policy:
  On‑site, 5 days in person
• Compensation: $200,000–$300,000 + 0.1%–0.2% equity
• Visa sponsorship: H-1B, O-1, OPT; case‑by‑case for exceptional candidates
• Employment type:
  
  Full-time