Founding Forward Deployed AI Engineer | Python / AI Agents / LLMs

Founding Forward Deployed AI Engineer | Python / AI Agents / LLMs | Must have Startup + FDE experience

Location: San Francisco, CA (Onsite, 5 days p/w)

Package: $185,000 - $255,000 + meaningful equity

Eligibility: Must hold existing US work authorization - US Residents Only (no visa sponsorship)

🚨 Please only apply if you have commercial experience with ALL of the following 🚨:

• Python backend engineering
• Building AI agents or LLM-powered tools in production
• Prior experience as a Forward Deployed Engineer (customer-facing, shipping into enterprise environments)
• Startup / scale-up experience
• Owning deployments end-to-end, from discovery through go-live
• Comfortable with some international travel to customer sites

🚀 Join an early-stage, investor-backed AI company embedding intelligent agents directly into the operations of major enterprise organisations. This is deep-tech with real-world teeth: production AI that replaces manual, disconnected workflows and delivers measurable outcomes fast.

You'll be the engineer in the field - shipping production code inside customer environments, scoping new workflows alongside their teams, and building the deployment motion from the ground up next to the founders. Prototypes become production systems here in a way most companies only talk about.

Required Background

• 3+ years of professional software engineering experience
• Proven delivery of systems running in real production environments
• Genuine full-stack / Python backend engineering caliber (not a pure solutions engineer or architect)
• Hands-on experience building AI agents or LLM-powered applications
• Prior forward-deployed / customer-facing engineering experience with real operators
• Startup or scale-up background with evidence of high personal ownership

ℹ️ Very Important Notes

• This role needs real hands-on engineering depth - not suitable for non-coders or scoping-only profiles
• You must be comfortable owning multiple responsibilities in a fast-moving, startup-style environment
• Direct customer interaction is core to the role, not a bolt-on
• High autonomy expected - you will scope, build, ship, and iterate quickly

Must-Haves

• Strong Python backend development
• Experience building AI agent architectures or LLM-powered applications
• Proven ability to ship production code independently in enterprise customer environments
• Startup mindset with evidence of high personal achievement
• Ability to translate ambiguous customer problems into technical specs and ship them
• Strong communication and technical ownership

Bonus Experience

• Prior forward-deployed role at a growth-stage startup or FDE-led business
• Exposure to complex, operationally demanding enterprise data environments
• Past technical founder or early founding engineer
• Open-source contributions in AI or agent tooling
• Comfortable reasoning about messy, real-world enterprise data (APIs, SQL, Python)

Hands-On Experience With

• Python (backend systems)
• AI agents and LLM-powered tooling
• Building and shipping production code inside customer environments
• Integrating APIs, data sources, and enterprise systems
• Prototype-to-production development across multiple domains

What You'll Be Doing

Deployment & Delivery

• Build and ship production code in customer environments, extending the platform to real operational needs
• Take new deployments from discovery through go-live, owning the outcomes end-to-end
• Develop reusable capabilities that make every future deployment faster

Customer Ownership

• Own day-to-day relationships with enterprise customers and their technical teams
• Identify and scope new workflows and use cases inside existing accounts
• Travel on-site to customer teams, including internationally, to embed with users and earn the trust that makes agents stick

Feedback Loop

• Bring field learnings back to the core engineering team
• Translate real-world constraints into technical priorities and product direction
• Help shape how the deployment motion scales as the company grows

What They're Looking For

• A proactive, technically sharp engineer with a scrappy, founder-like mindset
• Someone who thrives across multiple functions in a fast-moving environment
• A builder who loves autonomy, ownership, and rapid iteration
• An engineer who enjoys combining customer insight with deep technical execution

If you meet the above and want to build production AI agents that create real-world impact inside major enterprise operations, get in touch for a fast response.