Forward Deployed Engineer

**Seamflow** Forward Deployed Engineer; £100K–£150K base per year + meaningful equity (~0.1%–1%); London (On-site)

**About Company** Seamflow builds AI-native software for the Testing, Inspection, and Certification (TIC) industry — a ~$300bn market that sits between manufacturers and regulators, verifying that products, processes, and systems meet safety, quality, and regulatory standards. It's a large, legacy industry built during the Industrial Revolution: still highly manual, resistant to change, and only now feeling real pressure to adopt AI. Seamflow builds a suite of tools that remove the manual bottlenecks in these workflows, and is one of the first companies doing it properly — rather than an off-the-shelf product, they build tools and customise them in granular detail to each customer's workflows.

Seamflow raised a 14x oversubscribed $4.5M seed round earlier this year from Initialized Capital and Northzone — the funds behind the founders of Coinbase, Reddit, Klarna, and Spotify — plus angels. They're already deployed inside most of the largest TIC players, seeing rapid revenue growth (demand outstripping supply), and plan to raise a Series A before the end of the year. The market is Euro-centric (hence the London HQ) but expanding into the US and China.

The team is ~11 people, scaling toward ~20. Engineering is world-class: a founding engineer from Fuse Energy (a ~$5bn company, where he was a first hire), people from X (working directly with Elon Musk), Amazon, Yandex, and JetBrains, plus AI researchers from MIPT, UCL, and Johns Hopkins. Commercially, the team includes the youngest-ever associate partner at McKinsey, managers from Bain, and Forbes 30u30 alumni. CTO Yusuf leads the technical vision; lead engineer Dimitri (ex-Fuse, first hire) sits beneath him, and the structure is deliberately flat — engineers sit together daily, argue out the best outcome, and every voice is heard.

**About the Role** One of two Forward Deployed Engineer seats. Seamflow runs a consulting-like, high-touch model: TIC customers are resistant to change, so you sit with them, learn their workflows, and ship the software that solves them — across frontend and backend. The differentiator (vs. the Product Engineer) is that this person is an exceptional engineer who is also genuinely personable — able to sit with non-technical domain experts, explain complex problems simply, and win buy-in. Works alongside the commercial team and the Deployment Strategist.

**Responsibilities** - Sit directly with customers on their real workflows; build trust with technical and non-technical stakeholders. - Turn messy, real-world TIC processes into clear, working software. - Ship end to end — production-grade React/TypeScript frontend and Python backend. - Integrate LLMs, agents, and model-backed APIs into customer workflows. - Partner with the commercial team and Deployment Strategist on pitching and rollout.

**Required Skills** A. Exceptional engineering pedigree (non-negotiable) — standout work at a top company, leading AI lab, elite trading firm, or fast-scaling startup. A famous logo isn't required, but it helps. B. Strong TypeScript and a modern frontend framework (React or equivalent), production-grade. C. Comfort building backend services in Python. D. Experience integrating AI systems into production products. E. Reasons about complex workflows, not just CRUD. F. Genuinely personable — comfortable with non-technical domain experts and able to make complex things digestible.

**Bonus Skills** - A forward-deployed or solutions-engineering background (Palantir, Ramp, Scale, and similar). - An additional European language (useful for European deployments). - Founder or ex-founder; early-stage, EF, or YC. - World-class CS/engineering education. - AI products shipped in production.

**Logistical Info** - Location: London, in-person at the Shoreditch HQ; outcome-focused with some flexibility. Some travel to customer sites (Euro-centric market) given the embedded role. Open to relocation from anywhere. - Compensation: £100K–£150K base (by experience, not role) + meaningful equity (~0.1%–1%; confirm per candidate). - Number of openings: 2 (part of 5 engineering hires). - **Other:** Full visa sponsorship and relocation incl. flights; all meals in-office (breakfast, lunch, dinner); free gym membership.

**Ideal Background** - Clearest fit — forward-deployed / solutions-engineering (strong engineering + customer-facing): Palantir, Scale AI, PolyAI, H Company, Meta (Business Engineer). - Also strong — high-ownership product startups: Harvey, Happy Robot, Ramp, Cursor, Physical Intelligence, Bending Spoons, Vercel, Linear, Anduril. - Also strong — big tech with genuine end-to-end product work: Yandex, JetBrains, AWS, Microsoft, Google, Uber, ByteDance. - The non-negotiable: exceptional engineering plus the EQ to win a room. Big tech straight out is fine if paired with founder mindset.

**Green Flags** - Founder mindset: high agency, high ownership, low ego. - Builds end to end at production grade and ships fast. - Thrives in unstructured, ambiguous problems — "builds order out of chaos." - Intensity — willing to work long hours, including nights/weekends when needed.

**Red Flags** - Not personable; can't explain complex things to non-technical stakeholders. - No founder mindset; only comfortable in a structured/corporate environment. - Multiple short stints (e.g. several ~6-month roles). - Contract roles rather than full-time. - Misleading or irrelevant job titles. - Shiny logos without real depth or impact. - Comp expectations above ~£170K base — above the ceiling for this role. **Interview Process** 1. Screening call (~30 min) with Andrea — motivations, early-stage startup appetite, willingness to work hard, past experience. 2. Technical conversation (~40 min) with a founding engineer — not an exam; an in-depth technical discussion. 3. Take-home task (~2 hours). 4. Final "vibe check" with both founders to sign off.