Who is Recruiting from Scratch:
Recruiting from Scratch is a specialized talent firm dedicated to helping companies build exceptional teams. We partner closely with our clients to deeply understand their needs, then connect them with top-tier candidates who are not only highly skilled but also the right fit for the company’s culture and vision. Our mission is simple: place the best people in the right roles to drive long-term success for both clients and candidates.
Forward Deployed Engineer
Location: New York City
Company Stage of Funding: Seed Stage AI Infrastructure Startup
Office Type: Onsite
Salary: $160,000 - $260,000 Base + Equity (0.5% - 1.25%)
Company Description
We're representing a well-funded AI infrastructure startup building a platform that enables business teams in highly regulated industries to safely deploy AI-powered automation. Their technology allows organizations in healthcare, financial services, insurance, legal, and other compliance-heavy sectors to leverage coding agents and workflow automation while maintaining enterprise-grade governance, security, and compliance standards.
Founded by experienced operators from leading infrastructure and enterprise software companies, the team is tackling one of the largest opportunities in enterprise AI: enabling businesses to operationalize agentic workflows without compromising security, auditability, or regulatory requirements.
What You Will Do
- Partner directly with enterprise customers to scope, design, and deploy AI-powered workflow automation solutions.
- Lead end-to-end implementations, ensuring successful adoption and measurable business impact across customer organizations.
- Serve as the bridge between customers and product development, translating field insights into platform improvements and new product capabilities.
- Build custom workflows, integrations, and solutions that address customer-specific operational challenges.
- Collaborate closely with engineering leadership to shape product roadmap priorities based on real-world customer feedback.
- Design and implement workflow automation systems that leverage AI agents, enterprise integrations, and governance controls.
- Help define best practices for deploying AI systems in regulated environments.
- Contribute directly to core platform development while maintaining close customer engagement.
- Identify recurring customer needs and transform them into scalable product features.
- Drive technical discussions with stakeholders ranging from individual contributors to executive leadership teams.
Ideal Background
- 2+ years of experience as a Forward Deployed Engineer, Solutions Engineer, Product Engineer, Solutions Architect, or similar customer-facing technical role.
- Strong software engineering fundamentals with the ability to build production-quality solutions.
- Experience working directly with customers to understand business requirements and deliver technical solutions.
- Ability to balance customer-facing responsibilities with hands-on product development.
- Strong product instincts and a demonstrated ability to identify patterns across customer use cases.
- Experience operating in fast-paced startup environments with high levels of ownership and ambiguity.
- Excellent communication skills with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
- Proven track record of driving projects from concept through deployment.
Preferred
- Experience building or deploying AI-powered products, agentic workflows, or automation platforms.
- Background working with enterprise software, workflow automation, developer platforms, or infrastructure products.
- Familiarity with compliance-sensitive industries such as healthcare, fintech, insurance, or legal technology.
- Strong UI/UX instincts and an appreciation for building intuitive user experiences.
- Experience gathering customer feedback and influencing product roadmap decisions.
- Prior startup experience, particularly as an early engineer or founding team member.
- Interest in developer tools, AI infrastructure, and enterprise automation.
Compensation and Benefits
- Competitive base salary.
- Meaningful early-stage equity package.
- Medical, dental, and vision coverage.
- 401(k) with company match.
- Daily meal and coffee stipend.
- Opportunity to join as an early member of a highly ambitious startup building foundational AI infrastructure.
- Direct collaboration with experienced founders and significant influence over product direction.
- Beautiful office space in New York City with a strong in-person culture.
- High ownership role with significant opportunities for growth as the company scales.
- Fast-moving interview process including a paid onsite work trial to ensure strong mutual fit.
Salary Range: $160,000-$260,000 base.