Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE)
David Joseph & Company · San Francisco, California, United States
USD 165,000 to 250,000 a year
San Francisco, CA · On-site · Full-time
Compensation: $165K–$250K + equity
About the Company
Our client is a Series A AI company modernizing how insurance claims get processed, one of the largest and least automated workflows in a multi-hundred-billion-dollar industry. Their agentic platform blends computer vision, sensor and telematics interpretation, document understanding, and LLM reasoning to handle real claims for large enterprise customers. They are backed by leading venture investors, built strong revenue traction in their first year, and currently have more customer demand than they can serve.
Founded 2024 · ~50 people · Industry: Insurance, AI
The Role
We are looking for a hands-on engineer who enjoys sitting at the intersection of code and customers. As a Forward Deployed Engineer, you will take our client's AI systems into production at major enterprise accounts, owning each deployment from first scoping conversation to go-live. You will be among the first engineers in this function, so you will help shape how it runs as the team grows.
What you'll be doing
- Leading customer deployments of multimodal, agent-based AI systems from scoping through launch, as the main technical contact for senior stakeholders
- Building trusted relationships with customer leadership, understanding their priorities, and helping them expand their use of AI
- Designing and refining AI agents, including prompt engineering, model integration, and rapid prototyping with AI-assisted coding tools
- Scoping and building new features that help customers scale and improve outcomes
- Working directly with customer engineering teams to integrate the platform into their systems and APIs
- Partnering with the core platform team to deliver smoothly and turn field insights into product improvements
- Documenting what works in internal playbooks so the function can scale
Tech stack: Python
Requirements
- You have shipped production software in a fast-moving environment, such as a venture-backed startup, a founding engineering role, or a high-growth public tech company
- You have solid computer science foundations across data structures, algorithms, and system design
- You communicate clearly and confidently, and can explain technical work to customers and non-technical audiences
- You bring roughly 1 to 5 years in a hands-on technical role working in Python, ideally with some customer exposure
- You hold a degree in a STEM discipline
- You write strong, production-quality Python
- You have practical familiarity with LLMs, prompt engineering, and agent-based AI systems
- You can work from the San Francisco office five days a week
Nice to Haves
- A degree from a top-ranked program in your field
Why Join
- Join a well-funded team with clear product-market fit and runway to focus on building
- Work on challenging, applied AI problems that run in production every day
- Learn alongside an unusually strong team of engineers and published AI researchers
- Own your work end to end and ship to production from your first week
- Get broad exposure across backend, infrastructure, applied AI, and customer-facing work, with a path toward leadership as the function grows
Details
- Location: San Francisco, CA
- Work policy: On-site five days a week, with occasional customer site visits
- Compensation: $165,000–$250,000 + equity
- Visa sponsorship: Open to visa transfers (e.g. OPT, H-1B transfers); new sponsorship not available
- Employment type: Full-time