Forward Deployed Engineer – Frontier AI

Forward Deployed Engineer – Frontier AI

San Francisco | On-site

$200k–$275k base + 0.15–0.30% equity

We’re partnering with one of the fastest-growing companies in the frontier AI ecosystem to hire Forward Deployed Engineers into its early technical team.

This is a small, highly technical, YC-backed company building the training infrastructure and environments used to improve the capabilities of frontier AI models. Its customers include some of the world’s leading AI labs, with the team working directly with researchers tackling the next generation of agentic AI.

The growth has been exceptional: the business has gone from effectively zero to approximately $42m in run-rate revenue in under eight months, with significant additional contracted work already signed. The team is still only around ten people, making this an opportunity to join unusually early relative to the scale the business has already reached.

The Role

You’ll sit at the intersection of software engineering, reinforcement learning and customer deployment.

Rather than taking an established SaaS product and configuring it for customers, you’ll work directly with researchers at major AI labs to understand what they’re trying to achieve, then build and adapt the technical environments, tooling and workflows required to make it happen.

Expect to be hands-on: writing software, prototyping new capabilities, working with evaluation frameworks, debugging systems and making technical design decisions around bespoke projects.

You’ll also be comfortable getting on a call with highly technical customers, asking the right questions and turning ambiguous research requirements into something that can actually be engineered and delivered.

This is an engineering role first. It isn’t a sales or traditional Solutions Engineering position.

The broader technology environment includes Python, TypeScript, Next.js, Docker and AWS, although exact language matching is less important than engineering ability and relevant AI experience.

Who Could Be a Great Fit?

There isn’t one prescribed background. We’re particularly interested in three types of engineer:

1. Forward Deployed / Applied AI Engineers

You’ve worked in a highly technical, customer-facing engineering role within a strong AI company, with meaningful hands-on experience building evals, benchmarks, agent harnesses or related post-training systems.

Think environments similar to high-growth applied AI companies where engineers are expected to both build and work directly with sophisticated customers.

2. RL Researchers Who Build

Perhaps you’ve completed a PhD or spent time in reinforcement learning research, but you’re equally motivated by writing production software, shipping quickly and seeing your work deployed.

You want to be closer to real-world engineering and the practical application of RL rather than remaining solely research-focused.

3. AI Lab / Post-Training Engineers

You’ve worked within an AI lab or adjacent organisation on post-training data, reinforcement learning environments, evaluations or agent infrastructure, and want to apply that experience within a much smaller, faster-moving company.

We’re also open to exceptional earlier-career engineers coming from fast-moving start-ups. Pedigree for its own sake matters less than evidence that you learn exceptionally quickly, have built difficult things and can operate without lots of structure.

What Really Matters

Hands-on evals experience is important. If you’ve never built or worked deeply with model evaluations, this is unlikely to be the right match.

Direct reinforcement learning experience is highly desirable.

Beyond that, we’re looking for people who:

• Are genuinely strong software engineers
• Have built or worked with AI evaluation systems
• Understand modern AI/agent infrastructure
• Can operate in ambiguous, zero-to-one environments
• Enjoy working directly with highly technical customers
• Can translate research requirements into working software
• Move quickly without sacrificing technical quality
• Want to work close to the frontier of applied AI

Why Join?

The attraction here is the combination of stage, traction and technical exposure.

You’d be joining a team of roughly ten rather than disappearing into a large organisation, while working directly on projects for some of the most sophisticated AI teams in the world.

The Forward Deployed Engineering function is also expected to become a major part of the company as it scales. These engineers sit extremely close to the customer and the underlying technology, with their work directly contributing to the delivery of major projects.

For someone who wants exposure to frontier models, RL, evals and agent infrastructure without joining a huge AI lab, it’s a particularly interesting place to be.

Package

Base: $200k–$275k

Equity: Negotiable/Significant

Location: San Francisco

The wider package includes medical, dental and vision cover, meals, gym membership, 401(k) matching and a $10k+ relocation allowance.

Visa transfers can also be considered.

Candidates outside San Francisco can be considered where there is a genuine commitment to relocate.

Interested?

Apply directly or get in touch for a confidential conversation about the company, team and opportunity.