Forward Deployed Engineer

Forward Deployed Engineer

Company: Confidential — venture-backed technology company
Location: San Francisco, CA (in office 5 days per week)
Compensation: $220,000 - $320,000 + extremely competitive equity
Employment Type: Full-time
Visa Sponsorship: Visa transfers; sponsorship available

About the Company

The client turns unstructured documents into structured data for AI. With around 80% of enterprise data locked in unstructured formats, its document AI platform sits at the intersection of document understanding and LLM infrastructure, processing tens of millions of pages a month for customers from Harvey and Vanta to Fortune 10 enterprises.

Founded in 2023, the client has about 80 people, grew revenue 8x year over year and has raised $108M+ from a16z, Benchmark and First Round Capital.

The Role

The client is hiring founding Forward Deployed Engineers (3-6 years) to own technical deployment of its document AI platform with some of the world's most sophisticated enterprise customers. You will work directly with the founders to shape product direction and help define the function from the ground up. The team hires two profiles: backend-leaning FDEs who own evals, build custom apps and debug complex deployments, and customer-leaning FDEs who drive technical customer calls, bake-offs and account expansion.

What You Will Do

• Partner with AEs and SEs pre-sales to run rigorous evals, build custom demo applications and win competitive bake-offs.
• Own post-sales technical success for 1-3 enterprise accounts, meeting regularly to unblock issues and expand into new use cases.
• Build whatever drives customer value: eval applications, customized agents or product modifications.
• Create diagnostics, dashboards and eval harnesses to measure performance and catch regressions.
• Act as the feedback loop to product and engineering, and work with the founders on product direction.

What You Bring

• 3-6 years deploying production software, ideally with enterprise or regulated customers, in full-stack (backend-leaning) or product engineering
• Experience at a top-tier, recognizable startup shipping software to enterprise customers
• Strong Python, plus comfort with Bash and infrastructure
• AI/LLM fluency in how you code and a solid grasp of LLM/ML concepts
• Comfort leading technical discussions on customer calls
• A high quality bar, high agency and a quantitative, fast-iterating approach
• Ability to work in the San Francisco office 5 days a week

Nice to Have

• Founded a company or built products at an early stage
• Prior forward-deployed experience
• Designing and running evals
• Top-tier university background

Benefits

Unlimited PTO, free daily lunch, reimbursed transportation, generous medical/dental/vision, $150/month wellness budget, flexible parental leave.

Interview Process

Pre-onsite hiring manager screen and technicals, then a half-day on-site.

Tech Stack

Python, Bash, Streamlit, OCR, LLMs, vision-language models, REST APIs, document parsing, eval frameworks

Before you apply: get a free recruiter-readiness score for your resume at CareerStanding — about a minute, no signup, and your resume stays in your browser.

REVENUE: 15.74% of first-year salary. Est. fee per hire $35K-$50K; 4 seat(s) = up to $170K if all filled.

TARGET COMPANIES (suggested): Harvey, Vanta, Scale AI, Glean, Palantir, Unstructured, LlamaIndex.

BEST-FIT CANDIDATE: 3-6 yrs; recognized high-growth startup + enterprise customers; strong Python; hands-on LLM/eval work + customer-facing; visa: transfers; sponsorship available; location: SF 5 days. Top-tier startups only; avoid 2+ sub-1yr stints in 2-3 yrs, pure SEs with no coding, sloppy resumes.