This is a hands-on senior individual-contributor role at the intersection of applied AI, product, and distributed systems. You'll take ambiguous customer problems and complex product initiatives, turn them into focused architectures, and ship simple, reliable systems in production.
You'll build AI workers across the stack, from customer-facing experiences to long-running agent workflows and integrations with legacy ERPs and CRMs. You'll lead 0→1 initiatives, improve agent performance and reliability, help set model and agent strategy, and evolve our infrastructure as customer usage and model capabilities grow.
Technical leadership at Forgepoint means writing and operating core product code while raising the bar for the team through clear technical writing, thoughtful code review, mentorship, and better developer tooling. Our stack is TypeScript end-to-end with React, Node.js, and PostgreSQL, running on AWS and Kubernetes.
What you’ll doLead complex product initiatives from customer discovery and technical design through implementation, rollout, and production operation
Turn broad product requirements into focused architecture documents, clear tradeoffs, and incremental execution plans
Build core AI product experiences and the agent workflows, tools, and integrations behind them
Improve agent performance, reliability, and cost as usage grows and new models arrive
Design and operate distributed systems, including queues, workers, observability, and failure recovery
Help set technical strategy across models, agent architecture, context management, infrastructure, and developer experience
Raise the engineering bar through simple design, testing, code review, and operational follow-through
Mentor engineers and create patterns, documentation, and feedback loops that make the team more effective
You have 5+ years of product engineering experience and a track record of designing, shipping, and operating important systems; experience across both a high-growth startup and a scaled engineering organization is a plus
You are a strong systems thinker who can reduce a complex domain to clear boundaries and maintainable software
You have a product mindset: you learn how customers work, notice patterns, and connect technical decisions to customer value
You care deeply about code quality and reliability, but avoid abstraction or complexity for its own sake
You communicate clearly with technical and non-technical teammates and make others better through writing, code review, mentorship, and candid feedback
You form thoughtful opinions about fast-moving AI technology and choose models, architectures, and context strategies based on evidence
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
Deep experience with TypeScript, Node.js, React, or PostgreSQL
Experience with AWS, Kubernetes, queues, streaming, caching, retries, consistency, and observability
Experience building a large surface area of third-party integrations, especially with legacy systems
Experience building software for manufacturing or another operationally complex industry
Revitalize an industry. Rebuild America's manufacturing backbone.
America builds satellites, jet engines, semiconductors, and more with world-class precision, but the software running factory offices is decades behind. Estimators, procurement teams, and engineers still lose hours to spreadsheets, PDFs, and manual data entry.
Forgepoint builds AI workers for non-production departments — think inside sales, quoting, and procurement. 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 FoundersJack 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 at Meta, then founded YC-backed Demeanor which was acquired by NTWRK. He later became a founding engineer on Brex Spend Management, and ultimately the Head of Engineering for that organization. He holds a BS in Computer Science from USC.
How we workIn 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.
Prefer simple, incremental systems that solve the real problem and are easy to operate.
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.
Top-tier salary and equity.
Great healthcare.
Dinner at the office.
Unlimited Celsius.
Travel across the USA to spend time with customers on their shop floors.
Onsite in New York City, five days a week.
Skills Required
- 5+ years of product engineering experience
- Experience designing, shipping, and operating important production systems
- Strong systems thinking and ability to create clear, maintainable software boundaries
- Product mindset and ability to connect technical decisions to customer value
- Strong communication with technical and non-technical teammates
- Commitment to code quality, reliability, testing, and operational follow-through
- Ability to evaluate AI models, agent architectures, and context strategies using evidence
- Experience at both a high-growth startup and a scaled engineering organization
- Deep experience with TypeScript, Node.js, React, or PostgreSQL
- Experience with AWS, Kubernetes, queues, streaming, caching, retries, consistency, and observability
- Experience building extensive third-party integrations, especially with legacy systems
- Experience building software for manufacturing or another operationally complex industry
What We Do
Forgepoint builds AI agents for American manufacturing firms, taking on critical back-office jobs like quoting, invoicing, and customer support. Backed by a16z speedrun, we’re bringing Fortune 500 speed and precision to every shop floor in America.







