Founding Forward-Deployed Engineer
On-site · Engineering, Product & Tech · Full time San Francisco, California, United States
Description
Our client is a stealth, seed-stage startup building an AI-powered wearable platform for industrial field technicians - running a real-time computer-vision and agentic AI system directly on smart-glasses hardware, live today with major data-center, energy, and industrial customers across multiple countries. Backed by a $5M seed round and founded by researchers from Harvard/NASA (computer vision, published at NeurIPS and ICCV) and MIT (machine learning, ex-quant researcher).
The bet: computer vision and agentic vision-language models (VLMs) grounded in real integrations with legacy enterprise systems (ServiceNow, SAP, Salesforce) - not another LLM wrapper. The industrial data this generates is also laying the groundwork for robotics automation down the line.
As Founding Forward-Deployed Engineer, you'll embed with large industrial customers (50,000+ employee organizations) and bring the product live on the factory floor - real software engineering plus the last-layer integrations into whatever internal systems the customer runs, not a non-coding "deployment strategist" role.
What you'll do
- Build API/webhook/ETL integrations into customer enterprise systems (ERP, CMMS, ServiceNow, SAP, ticketing, knowledge bases)
- Build agentic/RAG features tailored to each deployment, not just configure a vendor platform
- Turn ambiguous field requirements into shipped product, working directly with customers on-site
Location & culture
Based on-site in the SF Bay Area between trips, with roughly 25% domestic travel to customer sites. The founding team lives and works together for the first several months in a shared house before moving to a standard office — expect an intense, in-person, roughly 9-9-6 pace. Hours flex for exceptional, senior talent; the priority is getting the right person, not saving on salary.
Requirements
Essential
- 1–5 years hands-on FDE/solutions/implementation engineering shipping integrations and code
- Integration breadth: API/webhook/ETL connecting enterprise systems (ERP, CMMS, ServiceNow, SAP, ticketing, KBs)
- Has personally built agentic/RAG features — vendor-platform configuration alone isn't enough
- Customer-facing, energized by industrial/field customers
- Willing to travel domestically ~25%
Particularly valuable
- Industrial/legacy-enterprise deployment background
- Track record converting pilots/POCs into production at large enterprises
Benefits
Compensation & benefits
- Base: $160K–$245K
- Equity: 0.25%–0.75%
- Visa sponsorship available (O-1, TN, E-3, H-1B1, H-1B transfer, F-1 OPT/STEM OPT)
How to apply: resume plus a short example of an integration you shipped into a customer's existing systems.