Founding Forward Deployed Engineer

Department: Engineering

Location: Austin

Employment Type: FullTime

About the Role

A fast-growing, Y Combinator–backed AI startup in the industrial logistics space is hiring its first technical hire on the ground in the US. As a Founding Forward Deployed Engineer, you will own the full technical success of US customers end-to-end — sitting at the front line of every deployment and shaping how the product lands in the market.

The company builds AI agents targeting the short-haul trucking and waste management sector — a massive market still largely run on spreadsheets — and is scaling rapidly with strong month-over-month growth heading toward key ARR milestones.

What You'll Do

• Lead technical deployments and onboarding for US customers from kickoff through go-live

• Serve as the primary technical point of contact for customers, diagnosing and resolving integration and operational issues

• Integrate the platform with customers' existing job management systems and GPS/telematics infrastructure

• Translate customer feedback and real-world deployment learnings into clear product insights for the engineering team

• Build internal tooling, scripts, and processes to make deployments faster and more repeatable

• Partner closely with founders to define the forward-deployed function as the US business scales

• Act as a trusted technical advisor to logistics operations teams, often in industrial field environments

What We're Looking For

Required

• 3–10+ years of experience in a forward deployed engineering, solutions engineering, or technical implementation role

• Strong software engineering fundamentals — comfortable writing code to solve customer problems on the fly

• Experience integrating SaaS platforms with third-party systems via APIs, webhooks, or data pipelines

• Excellent communication skills — able to explain complex technical concepts to non-technical operations teams

• Self-starter mentality; comfortable operating with significant autonomy in an early-stage environment

• Willingness to be on-site in Austin, TX and travel to customer sites as needed

Nice to Have

• Background in logistics, fleet management, waste management, or industrial operations

• Experience at an early-stage startup or as a first technical hire in a market

• Familiarity with route optimization, scheduling systems, or GPS/telematics platforms

• Experience working with AI/ML-powered products in a deployment or customer-facing context

Compensation & Benefits

• Salary: $110,000 – $135,000 USD annually

• Founding-team equity opportunity

• Visa sponsorship: Not available — candidates must be authorized to work in the US

Location

• Austin, Texas, US — on-site role

• Travel to customer sites (primarily industrial/logistics environments) is expected