Forward Deployed Engineer (AI)

Location: San Francisco, California, United States; onsite five days per week. Candidates should be based in the Bay Area or willing to relocate.

Salary: $100,000–$220,000 base, plus milestone-based performance bonuses and 0.3%–1.5% equity.

Company

Early-stage AI company building infrastructure for enterprise AI agents operating in complex and highly regulated environments.

What you will do

• Own enterprise AI-agent implementations from requirements discovery and technical scoping through production deployment, evaluation, and iteration.
• Work directly with enterprise customers to define technical requirements, success criteria, and implementation plans.
• Deploy AI infrastructure and open-source models using Docker, Kubernetes, and GPU infrastructure.
• Build evaluations, benchmarks, and customer-specific success criteria for AI systems.
• Troubleshoot production AI systems across the deployment stack and manage multiple customer engagements.
• Partner with engineering to solve deployment challenges and improve the underlying platform.

Requirements

• 0–6 years of experience in forward deployed engineering, deployment engineering, solutions engineering, technical consulting, or a similar customer-facing role.
• Strong hands-on engineering skills and confidence leading technical customer conversations.
• Experience deploying, troubleshooting, and supporting production systems.
• Production experience with Docker and Kubernetes.
• Familiarity with open-source model deployment, AI infrastructure, or agentic AI workflows.
• Ability to scope ambiguous customer problems, manage multiple engagements, and own solutions through deployment and iteration.

Nice to have

• Experience deploying AI agents, agentic workflows, or open-source models and fine-tuning them.
• Experience with bare-metal GPU infrastructure, enterprise security, and compliance requirements.
• Technical consulting experience involving personally scoped and delivered customer engagements.
• Early-stage startup, founding, or technical entrepreneurial experience.

Culture & Benefits

• High-ownership role in an early-stage, fast-paced, milestone-driven startup environment.
• Close collaboration with customers and engineering.
• Full-time employment.
• Milestone-based performance bonuses and equity of 0.3%–1.5%.
• Visa sponsorship is not available.