Forward Deployed Engineer

AI Fund

$120K — $150K *
Information Technology
5 - 7 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 5+ years of hands-on software engineering experience
  • Fluent in Python (Django/FastAPI preferred)
  • Strong SQL skills including joins and query plans
  • Experience in customer-facing roles for deployments and integrations
  • Ability to debug production issues in unfamiliar code
  • Excellent communication skills for technical explanations

Responsibilities

  • Handle end-to-end customer deployments and incident triage
  • Configure Ayama’s software for new customers and their specific needs
  • Debug customer issues from root-cause analysis to patches
  • Scope and manage pilot deployments for onboarding new clients
  • Provide actionable field observations to product engineering
  • Develop customer-specific scripts and integration tools

Benefits

  • Full-time hybrid work model with some required travel
  • Engagement with cutting-edge AI applications in energy sector
  • Opportunity to work directly with high-profile customers
  • Collaborative environment backed by a Fortune 500 partner
  • Participation in product development through direct customer feedback
Full Job Description
Ayama has partnered with Andrew Ng's AI Fund and a Fortune 500 energy leader to use AI to reshape how $10+ Trillion of heavy assets operate, are managed, and are maintained. With electrification driving rapid growth in energy and reshoring accelerating the build out of U.S. electronics and IT manufacturing, the company plans to close critical gaps by raising asset uptime & output as well as staff productivity. Ayama is looking for a Forward Deployed Engineer to be the technical face of Ayama at our customers.

The Forward Deployed Engineer is customer-facing every day. You work with customer end users and customer IT teams primarily remotely, with periodic on-site visits to customer operational sites for deeper engagement, training, and incident response. This is a 100% hands-on role split between customer engagement and code. You write Python and SQL daily, debug across systems you didn't build, configure Ayama for each customer's operational reality, and translate field observations back into product decisions.

This is a full-time hybrid role located in the Bay Area. Additional locations will be considered in the Western US as long as you live within 30 miles of a major airport with daily flights to San Francisco. Some travel to customer sites will be required. There is no relocation package budgeted for this role.

Responsibilities for the Role Include:

  • Own customer deployments end-to-end at the technical working level: daily operations, training, configuration, incident triage
  • Configure Ayama for new customers: enterprise system integrations, operational data mappings, asset hierarchy, customer-specific workflows
  • Debug customer-affecting issues end-to-end: read logs, trace through pipelines, patch in production, file precise root-cause reports for engineering
  • Scope and execute pilot deployments as Ayama brings on new customers
  • Translate field reality into structured product feedback that engineering can act on directly
  • Build customer-specific scripts, integration adapters, and small tools that don't belong in core product code


Requirements For the Role Include:

  • 5+ years of hands-on software engineering experience
  • Daily Python fluency (Django/FastAPI preferred, transferable from Flask or other modern Python frameworks)
  • Strong SQL: joins, aggregations, window functions, and reading query plans
  • Track record of customer-facing engineering: deployments, integrations, or incident response with customers in the room
  • Comfort debugging production issues in code you didn't write
  • Direct, structured communication: you can write a clear bug report and explain a technical issue to a non-engineer
  • Cloud experience (GCP preferred) and at least one shipped integration with an enterprise system (ERP, CRM, CMMS, or similar)


Nice To Haves Include:

  • Prior Forward Deployed Engineer, Implementation Engineer, or Solutions Engineer experience at enterprise or B2B SaaS companies
  • ERP / CMMS integration experience
  • Industrial or operations domain background: heavy assets, telemetry, asset management
  • Background in a physical-engineering discipline (mechanical, electrical, industrial)


The compensation package will include a base salary plus equity along with a full-benefits package.

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