Principal Forward Deployed Engineer
The Principal FDE at Maybern is responsible for leading early-stage discovery with senior private market clients, translating ambiguous needs into structured proposals, and scoping engagements across AI, forecasting, automation, decision support, and platform integration.
Responsibilities
Lead early-stage discovery with the most senior people in private markets, translating ambiguous and sometimes contradictory needs into structured proposals, and scoping engagements across AI, forecasting, automation, decision support, and platform integration.
Own senior client relationships end-to-end, from initial discovery through production adoption, managing scope, timeline, and expectations along the way.
Architect production-grade AI systems that clients run their business on, not demos: agentic workflows, extraction and automation over messy real-world data, evals, optimization, simulation, and decision support, in collaboration with the engineering team.
Support the sales motion by lending technical credibility to pre-sales conversations and helping shape and close new engagements.
Build the practice: establish a repeatable solutioning and scoping playbook, mentor engineers across the team, help hire the bench beneath you, and identify when bespoke customer work should become reusable product capability.
Requirements
10+ years of customer-facing technical experience in consulting, enterprise software, or forward-deployed engineering, with a strong track record leading ambiguous client initiatives from discovery through delivery.
Deep strength in Python, SQL, system design, and analytical application architecture, with hands-on experience taking AI systems to production, including agentic workflows and evaluation frameworks.
Exceptional communication and stakeholder management skills, including the ability to write proposals, scope complex engagements, and manage difficult client situations.
Qualifications
Executive Presence: Comfortable in the room with senior, non-technical clients. Listens well, asks sharp questions, earns trust quickly, and pushes back when needed without losing the relationship.
Solution Architect & Proposal Writer: Can take a vague client problem, structure it into a credible technical plan, and author a written proposal from scratch: framing the problem, the approach, the deliverables, and the value.
Delivery Leader: Has led end-to-end engagements with meaningful complexity, owning scope, timeline, and outcomes across both technical and client-facing work streams.
Builder of Real AI: Thinks past the happy path. Cares about how a system behaves when the data is messy, how errors get caught, and how AI holds up when someone else's business depends on it.
Driven by Outcomes: Competitive, high-ownership, and motivated by impact and upside. Think in terms of the ROI of your work, not just the deliverable.
Benefits
A competitive salary + equity package
Comprehensive benefits
A flexible family-friendly work environment