Founding Forward Deployed Engineer

We are looking for a Founding Forward Deployed Engineer with 1–5 years of experience to own the customer-facing build at Optimized — embedding AI agents directly into the procurement and supply chain operations of Fortune 500 manufacturers. You'll be the engineer in the field: shipping production code, scoping new workflows with existing customers, and building the deployment motion from the ground up alongside the founding team.

What will you be doing?

- Own relationships with existing manufacturing customers day-to-day — working closely with their IT, supply chain, and procurement teams to identify and scope new workflows and use cases

- Build and ship production code in customer environments — extending the platform to meet customer needs in a way that scales across the broader customer base

- Take new deployments from discovery through go-live, owning outcomes (inventory, sourcing efficiency, forecast accuracy) end-to-end

- Travel on-site to manufacturer facilities (~15–30% of the time, including internationally to Europe and Asia) to embed alongside operators and earn the trust that makes agents stick

- Close the loop with the platform engineering team — bringing field learnings back to make the next deployment faster and more reliable

Key Requirements

- Full-stack engineering caliber — can ship production code independently in enterprise environments (pure solutions engineers without strong engineering depth are a red flag)

- Customer-facing deployment experience — has owned end-to-end technical deployments with real operators, not just internal feature shipping

- Strong communicator with a curious, disciplined mindset — asks questions to build an accurate mental model before jumping to solutions

- Background at a growth-stage startup or forward-deployed role (e.g. Palantir, Gecko Robotics, Sierra, or similar); pure Big Tech backgrounds are noisy

- Based in San Francisco and able to work 5 days/week in-person; must be comfortable with international travel (~15–30%)