Forward Deployed Engineer

Who you are

• A builder and founder at heart, you’ve started a company, built products that got users, or made revenue independently
• Comfortable talking to users weekly and distilling insight into product decisions
• Technical enough to ship production code on your own, experience with Python, JavaScript, or similar languages
• Experienced using AI/LLMs and developer tools like Windsurf and Cursor to move faster and smarter
• Business-minded, you’ve worked in consulting, managed a P&L, or attended business school and know how to prioritize based on ROI
• Comfortable operating in ambiguity and energized by a high-trust, high-impact, in-person environment

What the job involves

• We are looking for a Forward Deployed AI Engineer to lead product development on some of the most strategically important initiatives at Wonderschool
• You’ll spend your time working directly with customers (traveling as needed), uncovering pain points, and building AI-powered solutions that drive measurable impact across revenue, operational efficiency, and user experience
• You’ll act like a founder inside the company: identifying problems, shipping code, driving adoption, and iterating quickly based on what you learn
• This role blends engineering, product, operations, and business leadership, and is ideal for someone who has launched products, acquired users, and driven growth independently
• You will work closely with our sales, onboarding, and account management teams to automate workflows, build better customer experiences, and unlock new growth
• This role is inspired by best-in-class FDSEs at companies like Palantir and is perfect for builders who love solving real-world problems in the field, not from behind a desk
• Work directly with users and internal teams to identify high-leverage problems and ship product solutions
• Write production code (approximately 50% of your time) and ship weekly improvements across the customer journey
• Use tools like Widesurf, Cursor, and other AI accelerators to increase your velocity and quality of output
• Build and deploy AI-powered tooling that eliminates manual effort and improves the experience for providers, parents, and government partners
• Automate onboarding flows, proposal generation, reporting processes, and other operational workflows
• Own full loops: talk to users, design solutions, write code, test, deploy, and monitor adoption
• Prioritize based on business impact and collaborate across teams to drive measurable results
• What Success Looks Like:
• You uncover user pain points faster than anyone else and consistently ship solutions that address them
• You deploy AI-infused internal tools or product experiences that improve core metrics (conversion, retention, revenue)
• You fully own feedback loops, from discovery to deployment, and iterate rapidly. Internal teams rely on your tools to operate faster and with fewer resources
• You’re moving fast, staying close to the customer, and operating with very little hand-holding