Forward Deployed Engineer

Forward Deployed Engineer - AI Software Engineer | NYC | $180k–$220k + Equity

I’m partnering with a fast-growing, venture-backed AI startup in New York that is building autonomous software for one of the largest and most operationally complex areas of the global economy.

They’ve raised $35m+ and are now scaling the engineering team as customer demand accelerates. The business is still small enough that individual engineers have genuine influence over the product, architecture and direction of the company.

They’re hiring Forward Deployed Engineers to sit directly between customers and engineering.

This isn’t a pre-sales role, and it isn’t an implementation role where somebody hands you a specification and asks you to configure it.

You’ll meet customers, understand how their business actually operates, identify what needs solving, architect the solution and then build and ship the production software yourself .

That could mean creating a new AI-powered workflow from scratch, integrating with complex enterprise systems, building backend services and data pipelines, deploying infrastructure, or developing functionality that ultimately finds its way back into the core platform.

Why it’s interesting

The company has deliberately adopted an FDE-led engineering model . Rather than separating engineers into narrow frontend, backend and infrastructure functions, they want generalists who can own problems across the stack.

You’ll spend meaningful time with customers, but remain a proper software engineer: gathering requirements, making architectural decisions and writing production code.

The engineering environment is also highly AI-native . Modern AI development tools are part of the everyday workflow, and you’ll be building real agentic systems solving complex operational problems.

Who could be a great fit?

There isn’t one perfect background. We’re particularly interested in a few different archetypes:

The Startup Generalist

You’ve been an engineer at a strong Seed–Series B startup, worked across the stack and are comfortable figuring things out without a perfectly defined specification.

The Big Tech → Startup Engineer

You’ve had excellent engineering training at a recognised technology company but want more ownership, customer exposure and the pace of an earlier-stage environment. A combination of Big Tech and startup experience is particularly interesting.

The Existing FDE / Customer-Facing SWE

You already work directly with customers, scope technical problems and then build the software required to solve them.

The B2B Product Engineer

You may not have “FDE” in your title, but you’ve built integrations, internal tools, workflow software or customer-specific functionality and are comfortable owning delivery from discovery through production.

The AI-Native Engineer

Perhaps your current company isn't AI-first, but you are. You use AI development tools heavily, have experimented with agents or AI applications yourself, and actively want your next role to be closer to applied AI.

What we’re looking for

Typically 3–6 years of software engineering experience , with strong CS fundamentals and good system-design instincts.

You should be comfortable taking an ambiguous problem, challenging assumptions, deciding what needs to be built and then actually building it.

Experience with Python, TypeScript or Rust is useful, but engineering quality and fundamentals matter considerably more than matching an exact technology checklist.

Most importantly, you need to enjoy solving real problems for end users . This probably isn't the right environment if you want to work on one narrow technical area with requirements handed down to you.

New York City – hybrid

$180k–$220k base + equity

AI-native engineering environment

Early-stage, heavily funded and scaling

Customer discovery → architecture → production code

If you’re a strong software engineer who wants more ownership, more customer exposure and the opportunity to build AI systems that solve real-world problems , I’d love to hear from you.

Drop me a message or apply directly and I can share more about the company, product and engineering team.