Forward Deployed Engineer

Department: Engineering

Location: San Francisco

Compensation: $200K – $325K • Offers Equity

Employment Type: FullTime

Who We Are

Serval is an AI-native automation platform transforming how enterprises operate. We build intelligent agents that understand real-world workflows and execute them end-to-end — replacing manual processes and rigid legacy systems with adaptive, learning software. Founded in early 2024, Serval is already trusted by companies like General Motors, Notion, Perplexity, Vercel, Mercor, LangChain, and Verkada to automate high-volume, high-friction operational work across their organizations.

At the core of Serval is an agentic AI platform that turns natural language into production-grade workflows. Our agents don’t just respond to requests — they reason, take action across systems, and continuously improve with usage. What began with operational use cases has quickly evolved into a horizontal AI automation layer used across IT, HR, Finance, Security, Legal, and Engineering.

Our mission is to eliminate repetitive, manual work across the enterprise and give teams leverage through intelligent automation. Long term, we’re building the universal AI operations layer — a system of agents that sits across business functions and runs the workflows that keep modern companies moving.

We’re backed by leading investors including Sequoia Capital, Redpoint Ventures, Meritech, First Round, General Catalyst, Elad Gil, and others, and founded by product and engineering leaders from Verkada.

About the team

The Agent Deployment team is a specialized technical team responsible for end-to-end execution of Serval's AI agent deployments. The org has two tracks: Forward Deployed Engineers operate as technical leads on our most strategic engagements, owning the full build from architecture through production; Deployment Strategists own the customer lifecycle from implementation to adoption and expansion. Both roles are technical, customer-facing, and central to how Serval turns product capability into real business outcomes.

Role Overview

Forward Deployed Engineers are customer-facing software engineers: shipping features, building new capabilities, and expanding our product surface area inside some of the world’s most complex enterprises. You’ll work directly with customers to turn messy, high-stakes workflows into reliable AI-driven systems – shipping production code that influences both revenue and product direction.

This is a founding role on a team we're building from scratch. We expect you to operate with autonomy, make sound judgment calls in ambiguous environments, and represent Serval with credibility at the most senior levels of an organization. If you're energized by building something that didn't exist before and having a direct line between your work and company growth, this is the role for you.

What You’ll Do

• Architect and build production-grade systems for strategic pilots, turning complex requirements into scalable implementations that transition cleanly into core product

• Design, implement, and maintain backend services, APIs, and integrations that extend Serval’s AI agent platform and are used across customers

• Engineer secure, high-performance integrations with external systems, focusing on reliability, data modeling, observability, and long-term maintainability

• Convert real-world customer edge cases into generalized, reusable product capabilities through thoughtful system design and code contributions

• Own the technical lifecycle of key deployments, from initial architecture through scaling, performance optimization, and continuous improvement

What You’ll Need

• 2+ years of software engineering experience, ideally in a product-focused or customer-facing role

• Strong coding and system design skills, with experience shipping production systems and building external integrations

• Comfort operating in fast-moving environments with high ownership and limited structure

• Ability to communicate clearly with both technical and business stakeholders

• A track record of taking initiatives from ambiguous problem to shipped solution with measurable impact

Nice to Have

• Experience at an early-stage startup as a founding or early engineer

• Background working with enterprise customers or supporting complex technical sales cycles

• Familiarity with IT, security, service management, or workflow automation domains

• Experience building or deploying AI/LLM-powered features or agent-based systems

• Interest in founding or building a company in the future

What We Offer

• Impact: Be a key player in shaping the success of our product and company.

• Growth: Build a fundamentally new AI product offering with the support of our experienced team and investors. Grow rapidly with the company.

• Culture: Join a culture that values innovation, ownership, accountability, and fun.