Forward Deployed Engineer

About the company Our client is a fast-growing software company. The role Raydar is recruiting for this role on behalf of our client. Work as a hands-on engineer embedded with large business customers, owning technical deployment and ongoing success after the sale. Split time between building custom tooling, supporting pre-sales technical evaluations and acting as a bridge between customers and internal product and engineering teams. This is a founding role in a newly created function. What you'll do - Support sales colleagues before the sale by running technical evaluations, building demo applications and helping win competitive bake-offs. - Own technical success for a small set of enterprise accounts, meeting with customers regularly to resolve issues, deepen adoption and open up expansion. - Build whatever the customer needs, from an evaluation app to a tailored agent or changes to an existing product surface. - Develop strong relationships with customer stakeholders, especially technical ones. - Create diagnostics, dashboards and evaluation harnesses to measure performance and catch regressions across environments. - Relay usability gaps, unmet needs and opportunities back to product and engineering teams. - Work directly with founders and customers to help shape product direction and engineering strategy. Requirements What we're looking for - Several years of hands-on experience taking software live in production environments, ideally for customers with demanding or regulated requirements. - A background at a well-regarded early-stage company, delivering working software to business clients. - Strong Python proficiency, with the ability to work in Bash and infrastructure as needed. - Fluency with AI-assisted coding tools and a solid grasp of LLM and machine learning concepts. - Comfort leading technical discussions on customer calls, with clear and polished communication. - A quantitative, hands-on approach: able to debug, experiment and iterate quickly across the full development lifecycle. - A high bar for quality, strong ownership and the agency to step in and fix problems rather than only flag them. - Willingness to build your own small tools, such as a quick app to test a hypothesis or assemble a dataset. Bonus points - Founding experience or early-stage product building. - Prior experience in a forward-deployed role supporting large customers. - Ability to design and run evaluations. - Comfort acting as both a backend-leaning engineer and a customer-facing lead. - Up-to-date knowledge of developments in ML and AI. - Degree from a top-tier university. Benefits Compensation and benefits - Base salary: USD 220,000 to 320,000 per year - Equity - Health, dental and vision coverage - Parental leave - Flexible time off - Wellness benefits Location and work model - San Francisco, CA, United States - On-site, 5 days per week in office - Full-time