Founding Forward Deployed Engineer

About the role

We’re looking to bring on our first Forward Deployed Engineer to round out our founding team. This is a great opportunity to learn, take ownership, and set a foundation for rapid career growth.

Responsibilities

• Build rapid prototypes and POCs for prospects.
• Create demo tooling and reusable templates to accelerate sales.
• Run technical discovery and scope solutions with customers.
• Implement turnkey integrations (APIs, pipelines, dashboards) and hand off to CS.
• Connect Crustdata to customer systems and third-party tools.
• Iterate prototypes into repeatable reference implementations.
• Share feedback with Product & Engineering and write docs/playbooks.
• Travel occasionally for workshops or on-site work.

Requirements

• 1+ years in customer-facing engineering (FDE, solutions, PS, pre-sales).
• 1+ years experience shipping production code (Python and/or JavaScript/TypeScript) + strong SQL and data stack experience (warehouses, ETL/ELT, data modeling).
• Strong software skills and CS fundamentals.
• Clear communicator who can translate technical tradeoffs for business stakeholders.
• Comfortable working in fast, cross-functional startup environments.

Qualifications

• Impact: As the first FDE hire, you’ll have direct impact on deals and product direction.
• Trajectory: Learn directly from founders, YC partners, and top-tier investors
• Ownership: Competitive comp and meaningful equity in a profitable, fast-growing company
• Mission: Help build the way AI agents interface with the internet

Benefits

• $150K - $200K salary range
• 0.10% - 0.15% stock option grant
• San Francisco, CA, US location

Pay

• $150K - $200K

Schedule

• Full-time