Forward Deployed Engineer

About David AI

David AI is the first audio data research company. We bring an R&D approach to data–developing datasets with the same rigor AI labs bring to models. Our mission is to bring AI into the real world, and we believe audio is the gateway. Speech is versatile, accessible, and human—it fits naturally into everyday life. As audio AI advances and new use cases emerge, high-quality training data is the bottleneck. This is where David AI comes in.

David AI was founded in 2024 by a team of former Scale AI engineers and operators. In less than a year, we’ve brought on most FAANG companies and AI labs as customers. We recently raised a $25M Series A from Jack Altman (Alt Capital), Amplify Partners, First Round Capital, and other Tier 1 investors.

Our team is sharp, humble, ambitious, and tight-knit. We’re looking for the best research, engineering, product, and operations minds to join us on our mission to push the frontier of audio AI.

About our Forward Deployed Engineering team

When we need to scale a new capability 0→1, our Forward Deployed Engineers work with our operations team and leading AI labs to identify problems and build solutions.

Day-to-day, you focus on the highest-impact work. One week you might build an app to capture a new class of speech data; the next, prompt-engineer a new evaluator; and another, embed with a customer’s engineering team to maximize the value of our datasets.

In this role, you will

• Design and ship custom 0→1 products for both our operations teams and customers.

• Navigate rapid context switches between technical deep-dives, customer-facing conversations, and data ops.

Your background looks like

• A scrappy builder who can take an idea from 0→1 faster than most could write a PRD.

• An excellent communicator who can bridge technical and business contexts.

• Comfortable across the stack — backend, frontend, data, and cloud.

• Proven track record shipping fast-paced features with customer impact.

• Prior experience as a Forward Deployed Engineer at a high-growth company, with software engineering and product management as part of your role.

Bonus points if you have

• Background as a former founder who has shipped and scaled products.

• Experience owning enterprise customer relationships.

• Familiarity with human data, audio, or machine learning.

• Top-tier consulting experience.

Compensation and benefits

• Rapid career growth at one of the fastest growing Series A companies, within a new and booming industry.

• Competitive salary and equity package.

• Flexible PTO policy.

• Top-notch health, dental, and vision coverage with 100% company reimbursement for most plans.

• Paid lunch and dinner in the office, every day through DoorDash.

• 401k access.