Forward Deployed Engineer

Reposted 6 Days Ago
Be an Early Applicant
San Francisco, CA, USA
Hybrid
200K-1M Annually
Mid level
Artificial Intelligence • Software
The MCP runtime between your agents and every system they need to reach.
The Role
As a Forward Deployed Engineer, you will lead technical discussions, design prototypes, and simplify complex solutions for AI applications. You'll empower customers and provide feedback to enhance product development, while actively engaging in the evolving AI landscape.
Summary Generated by Built In

Everyone's talking about AI. But here's the truth: ChatGPT can't send your emails. It can't book your flights. It can't even order you lunch.

Why? Because AI is trapped in a chat box. It can't take real actions in the real world.

We are changing that forever. We're not just building another AI company - we're creating the infrastructure that will power every AI application you'll use in the future.

The Revolution Needs You

Every AI app needs agentic "tools" - special functions that let AI models take real actions. Without tools, AI can only chat. With tools, AI can actually do things. We're building the definitive tools catalog and tool-calling platform that will unlock AI's true potential. Think Zapier for AI actions. Think Auth0 for AI. Think really big.

Why This Is The Opportunity of a Lifetime

  • Leadership-Market Fit : Our CEO previously founded Stormpath (acquired by Okta), our CTO led the vector database team at Redis and is a contributor to LangChain and LlamaIndex, and our CRO, Ben Sabrin, was the founding VP of Sales at MongoDB (scaled 0–$60M) and an early leader at JBoss and Okta.

  • Dream Team : We've assembled authentication, integrations, distributed systems, and AI experts from Okta, Redis, Microsoft, Splunk, Ngrok, Google, Airbyte, and HPE who've built and scaled multiple successful developer platforms.

  • Perfect Timing : We're at the inflection point of AI adoption. The biggest problem isn't better models - it's connecting AI to real-world actions. That's us.

  • Massive Market : We're building critical infrastructure for the biggest technological shift of our generation. Every AI app will need what we're building.

  • Backed By The Best: Our investors have backed Databricks, Clickhouse, MongoDB, Perplexity, Cohere, ScaleAI, Confluent, Elastic, and Firebase. They see what we see - this is going to be huge.

The Challenge

We need Forward Deployed Engineers who are deeply technical, incredibly articulate, and possess an insatiable curiosity for what’s possible. You aren't just giving demos; you are a systems thinker who can walk into a Fortune 500 customer and understand their entire technology landscape - identity, data, application, and governance layers - to design architectures that survive a rigorous security review. You’ll need to stay three steps ahead of the rapidly evolving Agentic AI ecosystem, mastering LLM orchestration, autonomous agent frameworks, and the complex world of tool-calling and action-oriented infrastructure. You won't just be a vendor; you’ll be a trusted consultant helping customers architect the transition from passive chat to active, automated intelligence.

What You'll Do

  • Act as the Technical Authority: Partner with AEs to lead technical discovery and evaluations with Head of AI, CTO, and Architect personas.

  • Build the "Art of the Possible": Design and build custom prototypes, PoCs, and reference architectures that show exactly how our infrastructure enables real-world AI actions.

  • Simplify the Complex: Take abstract infrastructure, middleware, and API concepts and turn them into clear, value-driven solutions for customers.

  • Field-to-Product Loop: Act as the eyes and ears of the market, funneling deep technical feedback back to our Product and Engineering teams to shape the roadmap. We build our product like a private open-source project; if a feature or fix is needed to unblock a deployment, you are empowered to make it happen. You can take customer learnings to create working prototypes and systems that can eventually become part of the core platform.

  • Drive Technical Wins: Navigate complex technical hurdles in deal cycles ranging from $200K+ to seven figures.

  • Master the AI Stack: Stay at the bleeding edge of the ecosystem (LangChain, LlamaIndex, Vector DBs) to consult customers on their broader AI strategy.

Required Skills

  • 3+ years of experience as a Pre-Sales/Solutions Engineer, Solutions Architect, or technical consultant who has sold highly technical infrastructure (Databases, Security, Integration, or Cloud).

  • Deep Integration & Systems Architecture Fluency: You've lived the reality of connecting enterprise systems in any form: iPaaS (MuleSoft, Workato, Boomi), ETL/ELT (Informatica, Fivetran, Airbyte), RPA (UiPath, Automation Anywhere), or API gateways and service mesh (Apigee, Kong, Istio). Agentic tool-calling is the next frontier of integration, and you want to build it.

  • Hands-on Technical Chops: You are comfortable with APIs, SDKs, and coding in modern languages (Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, etc.).

  • Curiosity & Business Acumen: You don't just answer technical questions; you dig deep to understand the "why" and the business impact of a solution. You can explain high-level concepts to an executive buyer without losing the technical plot.

  • Evangelist Mindset: You’re a willing presenter, excited to speak at conferences, and interested in creating technical content and blogs to help lead the agentic AI conversation.

  • AI-Forward Mindset: You actively use AI in your daily workflows and are eager to master the agentic landscape.

Don't Have a Traditional Integration Background? Read This.

Integration is one path in, not the only one. If any of the following describes you, we absolutely want to talk:

  • AI Agent Builder: You've built with LangChain, LlamaIndex, LangGraph, CrewAI, AutoGen, or similar — and you've felt firsthand the pain of giving agents real-world capability.

  • Backend Engineer: You've shipped production microservices and understand what it takes to run, observe, and scale distributed systems in the real world.

  • Identity & Security Practitioner: You have deep fluency in OAuth 2.0, OIDC, SAML, SCIM, token lifecycles, delegated auth, and the modern identity stack — because agent authorization is one of the hardest problems we solve.

  • Infrastructure Engineer: You've lived in Kubernetes, containers, service meshes, cloud platforms (AWS/GCP/Azure), and CI/CD pipelines, and you know how enterprise software actually gets deployed.

  • Bonus points if you've done meaningful work in data science, ML engineering, or applied AI/ML — it'll sharpen every conversation you have with customer data and AI teams.

Join The Movement

We're not just building a product - we're leading a movement to transform AI from just chatbots to agents that can take actions against real systems. This is your chance to be at the forefront of that revolution.

If you want to look back in 5 years and say, "I helped build that", then we want to talk to you.

Skills Required

  • Experience in Pre-Sales/Solutions Engineering, Solutions Architecture, or technical consulting in infrastructure.
  • Familiarity with enterprise integration systems and processes.
  • Hands-on experience with APIs and coding in modern languages.
  • Strong curiosity and understanding of business impact in solutions.
  • Willingness to present and create technical content.
  • Active use of AI in workflows and eagerness to master agentic AI landscape.

Arcade.dev Compensation & Benefits Highlights

The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Arcade.dev and has not been reviewed or approved by Arcade.dev.

  • Fair & Transparent Compensation Published salary bands for several SF-based roles (e.g., Applied AI Engineer at $179k–$240k and Distributed Systems Engineer at $200k–$300k) give a clear anchor on cash positioning. Equity is also listed alongside base pay in current postings.
  • Equity Value & Accessibility Equity is explicitly included across role descriptions, signaling accessible ownership as part of total compensation. Recent funding momentum at the Series A stage supports pairing salary with equity, though grant specifics are role-dependent.
  • Leave & Time Off Breadth A job listing highlights Flexible PTO, indicating time-off policies with breadth rather than fixed accruals.

Arcade.dev Insights

Am I A Good Fit?
beta
Get Personalized Job Insights.
Our AI-powered fit analysis compares your resume with a job listing so you know if your skills & experience align.

The Company
HQ: San Francisco, CA
40 Employees
Year Founded: 2024

What We Do

Arcade.dev is the action runtime for enterprise AI agents. We enforce your security and governance policies on every action, execute reliably across every business system, and govern your agents from a single control plane. Configure once and use any model, framework, and client. Deploy the first agent the same way you deploy the hundredth. We're proud to announce our recent $60 million Series A, led by SYN Ventures, with strategic investment from Morgan Stanley and Wipro Ventures. Check out our profile in the Wall Street Journal for more on how we're solving the hardest problem in enterprise AI right now and why we are the team to solve it.

Why Work With Us

At Arcade, you don't step into an existing motion, you build it. We're an early-stage team solving one of the hardest problems in AI: making agent authorization and governance actually work. Real ownership from day one, no roadmap to inherit, just one to create. Come do the best work of your career, making AI safe, with the best, brightest, and mos

Similar Jobs

Optum Logo Optum

Forward Deployed Engineer - FDE - Remote

Artificial Intelligence • Big Data • Healthtech • Information Technology • Machine Learning • Software • Analytics
In-Office or Remote
San Diego, CA, USA
160000 Employees
177K-303K Annually

Palantir Technologies Logo Palantir Technologies

Infrastructure Engineer

Artificial Intelligence • Software
Hybrid
Palo Alto, CA, USA
4400 Employees
135K-145K Annually

Cloudflare Logo Cloudflare

Senior Forward Deployed Engineer

Cloud • Information Technology • Security • Software • Cybersecurity
Hybrid
San Francisco, CA, USA
4400 Employees
194K-266K Annually

LogicMonitor Logo LogicMonitor

Sr. Forward Deployed Engineer

Artificial Intelligence • Cloud • Information Technology • Machine Learning • Software
Easy Apply
Hybrid
San Francisco, CA, USA
1100 Employees
131K-175K Annually

Similar Companies Hiring

Hanover Park Thumbnail
Artificial Intelligence • Fintech • Software • Financial Services
New York, New York
42 Employees
Kepler  Thumbnail
Fintech • Software
New York, New York
6 Employees
Onshore Thumbnail
Artificial Intelligence • Fintech • Software • Financial Services
New York, New York
60 Employees

Sign up now Access later

Create Free Account

Please log in or sign up to report this job.

Create Free Account