Forward Deployed Engineer - AI

The Role

As our first Forward Deployed Engineer, you will be the technical point of contact for customers in the field -- owning integrations, onsite deployment work, and the translation of real-world operational needs into robust, scalable technical solutions. You'll work hands-on with customer systems, troubleshoot complex environments, and rapidly prototype tools and integrations needed to make us successful in mission-critical settings.

This role is deeply technical and field-oriented -- focused on making the product work seamlessly in demanding industrial and government environments. You'll embed with users, uncover operational realities, validate technical assumptions, and ensure our technology performs reliably under real-world constraints. This is an ideal role for someone who enjoys building in messy environments, thrives on customer interaction, and takes pride in shipping solutions that matter.

What You'll Do

• Spend ~50% of your time onsite with customers across the US

• Build a ground-truth understanding of customer operations -- shadowing operators, analysts, and frontline teams to understand workflows, constraints, and integration requirements

• Rapidly prototype tools and integrations in the field ("vibe-coding") to validate ideas, solve urgent problems, and prove feasibility before handing off to engineering

• Troubleshoot and diagnose complex operational or systems issues across varied and sometimes degraded environments

• Translate field insights into clear technical requirements and integration specs for the engineering team

• Lead all technical integration work, including APIs, data pipelines, hardware/software interfaces, and security/compliance-sensitive deployment setups

• Work closely with engineering to ensure features, interfaces, and infrastructure align with real-world operational needs

• Represent customer technical realities internally -- ensuring feasibility, reliability, and operational constraints are deeply understood

• Decompose ambiguous, real-world problems into well-scoped technical workstreams

• Ensure customers succeed in mission-critical contexts by enabling smooth deployment, data flow, connectivity, and operational reliability

• Inform the product and engineering teams with data, field observations, and frontline feedback -- advocating for changes that reflect true customer needs

• Contribute to the foundation, process, and culture that will scale our forward deployed engineering function

Tech stack: TypeScript, JavaScript

Requirements

• 2 - 8 years of experience as a forward deployed engineer, technical product manager, or software engineer (Mandatory)
• Experience shipping products for enterprise customers (Mandatory)
• Experience at early-stage VC-backed startup, as a founder or founding engineer, or at highly relevant company (defense/industrial tech) (Mandatory)
• Experience building for defense/industrial tech, or government clients (Palantir, Anduril, or similar companies.) (Nice-to-have)
• Experience in a client-facing technical role is highly preferred (Nice-to-have)
• Demonstrated entrepreneurial drive (e.g., side projects, founder attempts) (Nice-to-have)
• Degree from a top-30 CS program (Mandatory)
• Evidence of academic excellence (e.g., math competitions, awards) (Nice-to-have)
• Strong backend-​leaning software engineering and CS fundamentals (Mandatory)
• Ability to rapidly prototype and 'vibe-code' with customers (Mandatory)

Why you should join us?

Proven Leadership Team with Successful Exits

• CEO/Co-founder: Early Palantir engineer who built and took Blend public at $4B valuation as CTO
• Co-founder: Early Palantir + built and sold startup to Walmart
• Operations/Business: Early Uber (launched Uber Eats/Rides) + 4 years at Metropolis scaling 1500+ locations

Strong Financial Position & Growth

• Just raised $6M seed (November) - oversubscribed with all strategic investors
• Years of runway with aggressive hiring plans
• Doubled revenue in December by signing neighboring customer
• Talking to nearly every large coal operator in the US

Massive Market Opportunity

• Customers do hundreds of millions to billions in revenue annually
• AI-driven platform preventing 80% of failures before they happen
• Saving millions in lost revenue through maximized uptime
• Proven success in coal, gemstones, oil & gas with international presence

Elite Technical Culture

• Fastest shipping team with minimal oversight - high autonomy environment
• Engineers own verticals/features end-to-end rather than just churning tickets
• Heavy AI adoption - helping engineers become 3x more productive
• Remote-first with 2 annual offsites including mine visits

About Us

Career Renew is recruiting for one of its clients, a fully remote AI-driven platform company that delivers significant cost savings for industrial operations by preventing equipment failures. We integrate with existing systems to detect and predict failures, automate responses, and notify personnel. Our technology also utilizes edge AI devices and drones for comprehensive event detection in challenging environments. We have a proven track record with clients in coal, gemstones, and oil & gas. This is a fully remote role for US-based candidates near major airport hubs. Salary range: 100-225K USD yearly plus benefits plus equity.