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)
Why Join Ayama:
- Exclusive Ecosystem: Unparalleled access to AI Fund's experts and Dr. Andrew Ng's network of AI luminaries.
- Real-World Impact: We are solving critical performance gaps in energy supply while demand driven by global electrification skyrockets.
- Growth Path: First role on what will become Ayama's customer engineering function. Lead and hire that team as the company scales.
Skills Required
- 5+ years of hands-on software engineering experience
- Daily Python fluency (Django/FastAPI preferred)
- Strong SQL skills: joins, aggregations, window functions
- Track record of customer-facing engineering
- Cloud experience (GCP preferred)
AI Fund Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about AI Fund and has not been reviewed or approved by AI Fund.
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Healthcare Strength — Health coverage is portrayed as strong with great healthcare and dental coverage, plus vision insurance, long-term disability, and life insurance. Feedback suggests this aligns with tech-standard benefits for US roles at a small venture studio.
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Retirement Support — Retirement benefits include a 401(k) plan with employer match for US employees. Feedback suggests this forms part of a competitive total package for fund roles.
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Parental & Family Support — Family support includes fully paid parental leave for applicable roles. Feedback suggests this is a standout benefit for an organization of this size.
AI Fund Insights
What We Do
Who is AI Fund? We are a team of AI pioneers, proven entrepreneurs, seasoned operators, and venture capitalists that collaborates with leading entrepreneurs to solve big challenges using artificial intelligence. Founded in 2017 by Dr. Andrew Ng, AI Fund is backed with $176 million in capital by some of the leading VC firms and investors, including NEA, Sequoia, and Greylock. How Are We Different? We work with entrepreneurs during their startup’s most critical and risky phase, from 0 to 1. At the earliest stages, your company strategy is still being formed, and you’re still on the path to demonstrating your idea’s full potential – this is a reality we understand. This is the period when decisions on product strategy, market fit, and team are most critical, moving fast and fixing parts of your business when you have limited resources is a challenge. We believe the best way to help entrepreneurs is by providing our time, expertise, and resources to help flesh out these key strategic decisions. Making the right decisions at the right time can often make the difference. We are here to improve these dynamics, at a time when the help matters the most. Why Work With AI Fund? Getting a startup from idea to Series A funding is not easy. We’ve been there and understand the challenges you must overcome. Whether you desire limited help and just want access to our unique ecosystems of AI experts and entrepreneurs or you would like our full support, we are interested in the opportunity to help in your success. We are flexible in how we work with companies, but ultimately, we are here to maximize your chance of success and accelerate getting your company to market. We provide the capital, expertise, and resources to accelerate the work required to minimize risks in your startup, help you rise above the noise, and make your company more attractive to new investors.
