Forward Deployed Engineer - Applied AI
About the role
We are looking for a Forward Deployed AI Engineer to lead product development on some of the most strategically important initiatives at Wonderschool. You’ll spend your time working directly with customers (traveling as needed), uncovering pain points, and building AI-powered solutions that drive measurable impact across revenue, operational efficiency, and user experience. You’ll act like a founder inside the company: identifying problems, shipping code, driving adoption, and iterating quickly based on what you learn. This role blends engineering, product, operations, and business leadership, and is ideal for someone who has launched products, acquired users, and driven growth independently. You will work closely with our sales, onboarding, and account management teams to automate workflows, build better customer experiences, and unlock new growth.
What You’ll Do
- Work directly with users and internal teams to identify high-leverage problems and ship product solutions.
- Write production code (approximately 50% of your time) and ship weekly improvements across the customer journey.
- Use tools like Widesurf, Cursor, and other AI accelerators to increase your velocity and quality of output.
- Build and deploy AI-powered tooling that eliminates manual effort and improves the experience for providers, parents, and government partners.
- Automate onboarding flows, proposal generation, reporting processes, and other operational workflows.
- Own full loops: talk to users, design solutions, write code, test, deploy, and monitor adoption.
- Prioritize based on business impact and collaborate across teams to drive measurable results.
Who You Are
- A builder and founder at heart, you’ve started a company, built products that got users, or made revenue independently.
- Comfortable talking to users weekly and distilling insight into product decisions.
- Technical enough to ship production code on your own, experience with Python, JavaScript, or similar languages.
- Experienced using AI/LLMs and developer tools like Windsurf and Cursor to move faster and smarter.
- Business-minded, you’ve worked in consulting, managed a P&L, or attended business school and know how to prioritize based on ROI.
- Comfortable operating in ambiguity and energized by a high-trust, high-impact, in-person environment.
Why Join Us
- Make a direct impact on families, small business owners, and communities.
- Operate with founder-like ownership on the company’s most important priorities.
- Join a small, fast-moving team with a bias for action.
- Talk to users, ship weekly, and see your work go live and drive real-world outcomes.
- Help reimagine early education and child care for the modern era.
Location
In-person, 5-6 days a week. This role requires regular client travel.
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