Forward Deployed Engineer
(AI-Native Engineering & Public Sector Systems)
Compensation: 170,000-190,000 + Equity
Location: New York City — on-site, 5 days per week (20% travel)
The Company
A high-growth AI-native software company is rebuilding the technology used by public institutions. Its configurable platform replaces fragmented legacy systems with modern software supporting critical operational workflows across government.
The business is scaling rapidly, with increasing adoption across state, local, and federal environments and a growing engineering organization supporting that expansion.
The Opportunity
This is a hands-on engineering role for someone who wants to solve difficult production problems close to real users rather than work several layers away from impact.
You’ll join while the company is still early enough to shape its engineering architecture and working practices, but at a point where customer demand and deployment volume are already creating significant technical challenges.
The Role
As a Forward Deployed Engineer, you’ll own the technical final mile between a reusable core platform and the specific systems, workflows, and constraints of individual public-sector customers.
You’ll work alongside product-focused deployment colleagues, turning real operating requirements into secure, scalable software while feeding repeated patterns back into the core platform.
What You’ll Do
Build production software that adapts a common platform to complex customer workflows and environments.
Translate ambiguous operational requirements into clear technical designs and working systems.
Architect integrations with legacy databases, APIs, infrastructure, and customer-owned systems.
Make pragmatic decisions about what should remain deployment-specific and what should become a reusable platform capability.
Partner with product and customer-facing colleagues to resolve technical questions and unblock deployments quickly.
Improve internal tooling and abstractions whenever repeated engineering work can be eliminated.
Use modern AI development tools to increase engineering velocity without outsourcing technical judgment to the model.
What You’ll Bring
Strong software engineering fundamentals and evidence that you have built and shipped meaningful systems end-to-end.
Experience taking software beyond prototypes into real production environments where reliability matters.
Ability to reason at both architectural and implementation level and communicate clearly about technical trade-offs.
Confidence working with integrations, data flows, APIs, databases, and unfamiliar systems.
Hands-on experience using modern AI coding tools as part of your development workflow.
High ownership, strong judgment, and the ability to work productively in ambiguous startup environments.
Enough communication ability to work effectively around customers and non-engineering stakeholders, even if your background has been primarily in core software engineering.
What This Role Requires
Strong hands-on software engineering capability.
Evidence of owning and shipping production systems rather than contributing only to narrowly defined components.
Ability to work in person in New York City five days per week.
Strong independent technical judgment, including the ability to challenge AI-generated solutions rather than simply accept them.
Comfort working in a fast-moving environment where customer problems can be unfamiliar, messy, and technically varied.
Tech Stack
AI-assisted engineering with tools including Claude and Codex
SQL and legacy database integrations
Single-tenant customer deployments
AI and agentic workflow orchestration
APIs, data integrations, internal tooling, and reusable software primitives
Why Join
Join early enough to materially shape the engineering platform, internal tooling, culture, and technical direction as the company scales.
Work on difficult, highly varied engineering problems where software moves directly into real operational environments rather than disappearing into a long product roadmap.
Combine meaningful public-sector impact with the ownership and potential upside of an early-stage technology company.
About People in AI
People in AI is a specialist recruitment partner connecting exceptional AI, machine learning, data, and engineering talent with some of the most ambitious technology companies in the world. We work closely with founders, technical leaders, and hiring teams to represent opportunities accurately and help candidates assess genuine fit.
