{"id":2505692,"url":"https://alion.io/job/crunchyroll-forward-deployed-engineer","title":"Forward Deployed Engineer","company":{"id":40459,"name":"Crunchyroll","domain":"crunchyroll.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/crunchyroll-news","size_band":null,"is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Greenhouse","truth_index":null},"role":"Solutions","role_family":"Solutions","seniority":"senior","employment_type":null,"work_mode":"hybrid","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Los Angeles, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":183400,"max":229200,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":229200},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":6,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"AI Agents","optional":false},{"name":"Context Engineering","optional":false},{"name":"Datadog","optional":false},{"name":"Function Calling","optional":false},{"name":"Human-in-the-Loop","optional":false},{"name":"Langfuse","optional":false},{"name":"LangSmith","optional":false},{"name":"LLM","optional":false},{"name":"LLM Guardrails","optional":false},{"name":"Model Context Protocol","optional":false},{"name":"Multi-Agent Systems","optional":false},{"name":"Prompt Engineering","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"RAG","optional":false},{"name":"Structured Outputs","optional":false},{"name":"Tool Use","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-10-01T23:20:24Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-10-01","last_verified_at":"2026-10-14T15:08:36Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":12,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":12},"description":"About Crunchyroll\nFounded by fans, Crunchyroll delivers the art and culture of anime to a passionate community. We super-serve over 100 million anime and manga fans across 200+ countries and territories, and help them connect with the stories and characters they crave. Whether that experience is online or in-person, streaming video, theatrical, games, merchandise, events and more, it’s powered by the anime content we all love.\nJoin our team, and help us shape the future of anime!\nAbout the Role\nWe're looking for a Forward Deployed Engineer to embed with teams across Crunchyroll and build AI solutions that materially change how work gets done.\nYou'll go where the work is. You'll sit with teams, understand how their workflows actually operate, identify where AI or automation can create meaningful value, and rapidly build solutions alongside the people who will use them. This role combines strong business judgment and consultative problem-solving with hands-on engineering. You'll take problems from ambiguity through prototype, production, and adoption.\nYou'll be part of AI Enablement in the Executive Office, working across Crunchyroll to turn high-value business problems into practical AI-powered solutions, including agents, workflow automation, and other applied AI systems. You'll connect models to the systems, tools, and data teams already use, and build the context, evaluations, guardrails, and human checkpoints required for them to work reliably in the real world.\nThe goal is not to build AI for its own sake. You'll focus on problems where AI can materially improve speed, quality, cost, or the employee experience, and you'll measure whether what you build actually delivers that impact.\nYou'll work closely with Engineering, Enterprise Technology, Data & Insights, IT, Security, and other partners to ensure solutions are scalable, secure, and maintainable. Every engagement should also leave behind reusable components, patterns, and lessons that make the next solution faster to build.\nIn this role, you will:\nEmbed deeply with business teams. Sit alongside them as work happens, map the real workflow rather than the documented one, and understand the pain points, decisions, systems, and handoffs that shape how work gets done.\nIdentify where AI can create meaningful business value. Start with the problem, not the technology, and be willing to conclude that AI is not the right answer.\nDetermine the right technical approach for each problem, whether that is an agentic system, generative AI, RAG, classical ML, deterministic automation, or a simpler software solution.\nTranslate ambiguous business problems into clear technical plans, including architecture, data flows, integration points, permissions, tool usage, success criteria, and build vs. buy vs. integrate decisions.\nPrototype quickly to test whether an idea works before over-engineering it. Know when to build something in days to learn and when a problem warrants production-grade infrastructure.\nDesign and build reliable AI systems end-to-end, including tool use, orchestration, context and prompt engineering, state and memory, structured outputs, APIs, enterprise integrations, and human-in-the-loop workflows.\nEngineer for the real world, not the demo. Anticipate failure modes, tool errors, hallucinations, retries, permission boundaries, latency, cost, security constraints, and graceful degradation.\nBuild evaluations and observability from the start. Define task-level success criteria and eval sets, and instrument tracing, logging, monitoring, cost, quality, and drift so performance is measurable in production.\nDefine the expected business outcome before you build and measure whether the solution actually improves the workflow after launch.\nWork directly with business and technical leaders, translating between business needs and technical reality, setting clear expectations, surfacing risks early, and keeping stakeholders aligned as the solution evolves.\nStay close to users after launch. Observe how solutions perform in real workflows, iterate based on usage and feedback, and partner with the broader AI Enablement team on adoption and change management.\nBuild for handoff and scale. Establish clear ownership, documentation, monitoring, and maintenance paths so successful solutions can transition to the appropriate long-term owner.\nCreate reusable components, patterns, tools, and learnings that make future AI solutions faster and easier to build across Crunchyroll.\nYou have:\n6+ years of software engineering experience, including significant recent experience building and shipping applied AI or LLM-powered systems in production.\nDemonstrated experience designing, building, and deploying AI systems that interact with APIs, enterprise systems, data sources, or external tools to complete multi-step tasks.\nStrong Python skills and deep experience with modern LLM application development, including tool and function calling, orchestration, prompt and context engineering, structured outputs, RAG, model APIs, state management, and enterprise integrations.\nExperience taking AI solutions end-to-end, from an ambiguous problem statement through architecture, prototyping, implementation, deployment, and iteration.\nExperience engineering AI systems for reliability, including failure handling, human-in-the-loop controls, guardrails, permissions, monitoring, cost management, and latency management.\nStrong technical judgment on when to use an agent, RAG, classical ML, automation, or conventional software, including the discipline to avoid unnecessary complexity.\nProven ability to work directly with non-technical stakeholders, understand how their work actually happens, and translate business needs into practical technical solutions.\nStrong product and business judgment. You can distinguish an interesting technical problem from a problem worth solving.\nComfort operating in ambiguous, early-stage environments where you are expected to define the problem as much as solve it.\nThe ability to move between rapid experimentation and production engineering, knowing when speed matters and when reliability, security, and scale matter more.\nA plus if you have:\nExperience in a forward-deployed, embedded, solutions engineering, applied AI, or highly cross-functional engineering role.\nExperience building tool-using or agentic systems that plan and execute multi-step workflows.\nExperience with APIs, MCP, event-driven systems, enterprise SaaS integrations, and internal data systems.\nExperience building internal platforms, SDKs, reusable tooling, or shared components adopted by other engineering teams.\nExperience evaluating and observing LLM or agent systems, including eval design, tracing, monitoring, and drift detection using tools such as Datadog, LangSmith, Langfuse, or similar platforms.\nExperience designing multi-agent systems, planner/executor architectures, specialized agents, or other orchestration patterns where they are appropriate.\nFamiliarity with workflow analysis and process mapping, particularly in complex operational environments.\nExposure to AI governance, security, privacy, and legal review processes, including risks related to data access, permissions, prompt injection, tool use, autonomous actions, and sensitive information.\nExperience in media, entertainment, streaming, consumer technology, or another environment with complex content and operational workflows. Familiarity with areas such as localization, marketing operations, content operations, customer support, rights management, or commerce is a plus.\nHow You'll Work\nYou won't operate from a centralized backlog waiting for requirements. You'll move toward the highest-value problems, embed with the teams experiencing them, and work alongside those teams until a solution is delivering measurable value.\nSome engagements may result in a lightweight automation built in days. Others may become production AI systems used across the company. Your job is to know the difference, build the right thing, and leave the organization more capable than you found it.\nAbout the Team\nThe Executive Office enables enterprise alignment, executive execution, and strategic acceleration, working to keep Crunchyroll's highest-priority work moving with clarity and speed.\nWhy you will love working at Crunchyroll\nIn addition to getting to work with fun, passionate and inspired colleagues, you will also enjoy the following benefits and perks:\nReceive a great compensation package including salary plus performance bonus earning potential, paid annually.\nFlexible time off policies allowing you to take the time you need to be your whole self.\nGenerous medical, dental, vision, STD, LTD, and life insurance\nHealth Saving Account HSA program\nHealth care and dependent care FSA\n401(k) plan, with employer match\nEmployer paid commuter benefit\nSupport program for new parents\nPet insurance and some of our offices are pet friendly!\n#LifeAtCrunchyroll #LI-Hybrid\nThe Pay Range for this position is listed. Actual pay will vary based on factors including, but not limited to location, experience, and performance. The range listed is just one component of Crunchyroll’s Total Rewards offerings for employees. Other rewards may include performance bonuses, employer matched retirement savings, time-off programs, and progressive health benefits and perks.\nPay Transparency - Los Angeles, CA\n$183,400—$229,200 USD\nAbout our Values\nWe want to be everything for someone rather than something for everyone and we do this by living and modeling our values in all that we do. We value\nCourage. We believe that when we overcome fear, we enable our best selves.\n\nCuriosity. We are curious, which is the gateway to empathy, inclusion, and understanding.\n\nKaizen. We have a growth mindset committed to constant forward progress.\nService. We serve our community with humility, enabling joy and belonging for others.\n\nOur commitment to diversity and inclusion\nOur mission of helping people belong reflects our commitment to diversity & inclusion. It's just the way we do business.\nWe are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at Crunchyroll. Pursuant to applicable law, we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.\nCrunchyroll, LLC is an independently operated joint venture between US-based Sony Pictures Entertainment, and Japan's Aniplex, a subsidiary of Sony Music Entertainment (Japan) Inc., both subsidiaries of Tokyo-based Sony Group Corporation.\nQuestions about Crunchyroll’s hiring process? Please check out our Hiring FAQs: https://help.crunchyroll.com/hc/en-us/articles/360040471712-Crunchyroll-Hiring-FAQs\nPlease refer to our Candidate Privacy Policy for more information about how we process your personal information, and your data protection rights: https://tbcdn.talentbrew.com/company/22978/v1_0/docs/spe-jobs-privacy-policy-update-for-crpa-dec-21-22.pdf\nPlease beware of recent scams to online job seekers. Those applying to our job openings will only be contacted directly from @crunchyroll.com email account.","description_format":"text","description_chars":11154,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":6,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Flexible time off","Life insurance","Pet friendly"],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"United States","iso":"US","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Artificial Intelligence","Sales & Marketing","Streaming & OTT Platforms"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-10-14T07:14:08Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":71,"band":"hot","label":"Hiring now","p_open":1,"p_active":0.792,"p_room":0.9,"age_days":12,"expected_fill_days":31,"reasons":["conf:0","win:mid"],"computed_at":"2026-10-14T15:34:28Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":229200,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/crunchyroll-forward-deployed-engineer","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/crunchyroll-forward-deployed-engineer.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-14T15:34:28Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":19677,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-15T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":40459},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=40459"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fcrunchyroll-forward-deployed-engineer"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fcrunchyroll-forward-deployed-engineer"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fcrunchyroll-forward-deployed-engineer"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/crunchyroll-forward-deployed-engineer\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fcrunchyroll-forward-deployed-engineer"}]}