Forward Deployed Engineer
Confirmed on the employer's own hiring board on Oct 15, 2026. First seen by Alion on Oct 15, 2026.
The Role
This is a client-facing technical role at the intersection of customers, product, and applied AI. You'll work directly with American manufacturers to understand how their business operates, turn messy requirements into clear agent behaviors, and deploy a reliable Frank that delivers measurable value.
You'll own customer agent deployments end-to-end: map workflows, prioritize requirements, write SOPs and prompts, build evals, configure tools and guardrails, launch with users, and improve performance over time. The inputs are real and imperfect: dirty PDFs, legacy data, tribal knowledge, and edge cases that break naive systems.
The work is hands-on, fast-moving, and deeply user-centric. You'll work with LLMs and code every day, communicate directly with customer teams, and turn what you learn in the field into better product capabilities and a faster, more repeatable deployment system.
What you’ll do
Lead agent deployments from discovery and requirements scoping through configuration, go-live, quantified ROI, and ongoing improvement
Map complex customer workflows and turn them into focused requirements, SOPs, prompts, tools, guardrails, approvals, and handoffs
Build evals and test cases that measure agent quality, expose failure modes, and guide iteration
Configure and launch agents, monitor their real-world performance, investigate failures, and improve reliability over time
Run customer workshops, communicate tradeoffs clearly, and close every dependency and follow-up needed to keep deployments moving
Learn complex customer domains quickly and advocate for customer needs with product and engineering
Turn repeated deployment problems into reusable patterns, tooling, and product improvements that make future launches faster
Who you are
You have 4+ years of experience in software engineering or a client-facing technical role such as forward deployed engineering, solutions engineering, or implementation consulting
You are technically strong and comfortable writing code, prompting LLMs, building evals, and learning new agent-engineering techniques
You can scope ambiguous requirements, prioritize aggressively, and design a simple solution within real product and operational constraints
You are an exceptional communicator who can run a customer workshop, present with confidence, and build trust from the shop floor to the executive team
You are highly organized and process-oriented: you can manage multiple deployments, track details, use metrics, and close every loop
You learn complex domains quickly and combine customer empathy with a product mindset, turning field insights into better tools and experiences
You are ambitious, resourceful, action-oriented, and team-first; you care about strengthening American manufacturing and are excited to work in person five days a week in NYC and travel to customer sites across the US
Bonus points
Experience building and operating agentic systems in production
Experience in manufacturing or another industrial or operationally complex setting
Experience creating SOPs or leading change-management work
Experience integrating and deploying third-party APIs or legacy systems
About Forgepoint
Revitalize an industry. Rebuild America's manufacturing backbone.
America builds satellites, jet engines, and semiconductors with world-class precision, but the software running factory offices is decades behind. Estimators, procurement teams, and accountants still lose hours to spreadsheets, PDFs, and manual data entry.
Forgepoint builds AI workers for back office departments like quoting, purchasing, invoicing, and sales coordination. By removing back-office bottlenecks, we help US manufacturers move faster, grow, and compete globally.
We're backed by a16z speedrun and angels from Brex, Xwing, and Betterment. Join us in rebuilding the digital foundation of American manufacturing.
Our Founders
Jack Strauss- Co-Founder & CEO
Jack began his career at Acer and Northrop Grumman, then advised industrial companies at Bain. At Xwing, he helped scale the company and led GTM through its acquisition by Joby Aviation. He holds an MBA from Stanford and a BA from USC.
Alex Pareto- Co-Founder & CTO
Alex began his career at Meta, founded YC-backed Demeanor, and joined NTWRK after its acquisition. He later became a founding engineer on Brex Spend Management and led its engineering organization. He holds a BS in Computer Science from USC.
How we work
In person every day in NYC for high-bandwidth collaboration
Talk to users constantly: we build with manufacturers, not for them
Own outcomes end-to-end and drive solutions without waiting for permission
Our Values
We're Here to Win: We are building to help American manufacturers, our customers, our company, and our teammates win at the highest level.
There's Always a Way: We are relentlessly resourceful, take ownership of constraints, and find a path forward when others stop.
Truth Over Comfort: We choose honesty over ego, surface reality quickly, and change course when the facts demand it.
Act Now: We move fast, trust our instincts, and correct course as we go.
Step Up: We act like founders, fill gaps, fix problems, and follow through until the work is done.
The Team. The Team. The Team.: We put the team first, push and support each other, share wins, and own failures together.
Comp & Benefits
Base salary $175,000-$215,000 depending on level and experience, plus the opportunity to receive meaningful early-stage equity ($50,000-$90,000 per year) in Forgepoint. You'll also have great healthcare coverage, dinner provided at the office, and unlimited Celsius.
Location
You'll be in our NYC office five days a week. If you're looking for a role where the real work happens somewhere else, this isn't it; if you want to be at the center of both the company and the customer, it is.