Careers · Engineering
Forward Deployed Engineer
Embed in a real business for eight weeks. Map how it actually runs, build the tools that remove the repeated work, train their people, and leave.
- Team
- Forward Deploy
- Type
- Full-time
- Location
- Remote-first (US timezone overlap) · ~1 day/week on client site
- Status
- Filling this one first
Why this role exists
Our consulting agent can read anything already in a system — analytics, orders, competitors, the site itself. That is also its ceiling. For most small businesses the majority of the operation lives on a clipboard, in a group text, or in the owner's head. Someone has to go and see it. That is this job.
What you'll do
- Sit with the people doing the work and map the real process — including the parts nobody documented and the workarounds nobody admits to
- Put a number on every repeated step: frequency, minutes, loaded cost. Recommend against automating the ones that aren't worth it
- Build against the client's real data and systems, in production — directing our agent tooling and reviewing every line it writes
- Train a named non-technical person on the client's team to run what you built, unaided, before the engagement closes
- Ship at least one generalized tool back into the Creytix catalog per engagement — the work only compounds if it leaves the client it came from
- Stay accountable after handoff: you are the person who answers when the thing you built misbehaves
What we need from you
- Production software engineering — Python and/or TypeScript at a level where an unfamiliar codebase is a Tuesday, not a blocker
- Real experience putting LLM-backed systems into production: prompting, evaluation, retrieval, agent design, and knowing where each one fails
- You can hold a technical conversation and a business conversation in the same meeting without condescending to either side
- High tolerance for ambiguity with a strong bias toward shipping something small this week
- Willing to travel roughly one day a week; comfortable being the outsider in someone else's building
Nice to have
- You've worked at or near a small business — trades, restaurants, retail, logistics, distribution
- Prior forward-deployed, solutions-engineering, or field-consulting experience
- Spanish
Your first 90 days
- Week 1–2: shadow an active engagement and write the process map for one department
- Week 3–6: own a Deploy Sprint end to end, supervised
- By day 60: one tool of yours merged into the Creytix catalog and running for a client who didn't commission it
- By day 90: running your own Forward Deploy engagement with a client who thinks of you as theirs
Compensation
Base
$130,000 – $165,000
Equity
0.4% – 1.0%
Base is US-remote. The frontier labs pay more for this title and ask for 25–50% travel in return; we ask for about one day a week and pay at the top of the early-stage band. Equity is real, not decorative.
Apply
Interested in the Forward Deployed Engineer role?
Tell us what you've built and what you'd want to own here. No cover letter, no portal — a real message reaches a real person.