Forward Deployed Engineer

San Francisco, United States | Posted on 06/29/2026

AI Talent Now, LLC is a powerhouse in direct-hire talent acquisition, connecting exceptional talent with industry-leading organizations across IT, Engineering, Financial Services & Fintech, and Manufacturing & Robotics. Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, we proudly serve clients and candidates nationwide.

AI Talent Now Job # ZR 88

The first Forward Deployed Engineer in San Francisco

As our first Forward Deployed Engineer in San Francisco, you'll establish our US FDE presence and help define how this function operates from the ground up. The FDE team is still small and the playbook is still being written - you'll be instrumental in shaping the processes, tooling, and best practices that the function runs on as it scales.

You'll work directly with engineering leaders at the world's most AI-driven companies, understanding their unique architectures and crafting solutions that work for their specific needs. This role demands an unusual combination of deep technical expertise and entrepreneurial drive, you'll be writing high-performance code one day and presenting architectural decisions to VPs of Engineering the next.

• Architect and deploy at scale: Work with a customer to understand their full architecture, design implementation strategies that fit their systems, and pair with their engineers to deliver them.
• Own the technical relationship and lead the pilot: Be the technical lead to engineering leadership (VPs Eng, Staff+ engineers) at each customer – driving scoping, integration, and rollout. A founder or account executive handles pricing and contracts; the two of you operate as a pod per account.
• Guide the direction of the product based on what you learn in the field: As you see how the product performs, and how engineers' workflows are rapidly evolving, work out what do we need to build to unlock the next level of automating software development? Where there are improvements which make sense to own and ship, ship them; where the work is larger and needs deeper scoping pair with core engineering team to make them happen.
• Build the playbook: The FDE function is still being defined. You'll be instrumental in establishing the processes, tooling, and best practices that make each deployment smoother and faster than the last, creating the leverage that lets the team scale.

Seniority

• 3 - 8 years of experience in a demanding technical engineering role, ideally involving customer-facing work
• At least one experience in a deeply technical/demanding role (e.g., founding engineer / ex-founder) at a high-growth startup
• Strong experience in or interest in customer-facing technical work – integration, deployment, or pilot ownership with engineering teams (not just sales/demos)

Education

• CS degree from a top university (Berkeley, Stanford, MIT, Ivy League, Harvey Mudd, etc.)
• If no CS degree, must demonstrate deep coding experience starting early (e.g. competitive programming, open source)
• Can solve algorithmic/logic coding problems under pressure
  — this is where most candidates fail in the interview process
• Built or scaled a greenfield product (e.g. 0 to 500K ARR) as a primary engineer

Based in San Francisco; able to work on-site 5 days/week but
willing to spend first ~2 months in London for onboarding