What are the responsibilities and job description for the Forward Deployed Engineer position at Harnham?
Forward Deployed Engineer
San Francisco, CA (Hybrid, 3 days/week in office)
Compensation: $200,000 – $250,000 base equity annual bonus
Our client is an AI-native B2B SaaS company is looking for a Forward Deployed Engineer to join their growing team in San Francisco. The company is a Series B startup (~50 employees, $75M raised) building a personalization platform that helps ecommerce brands deliver intelligent, scalable customer experiences. This is a high-impact role sitting at the intersection of engineering, product, and customer success.
About the Role
As a Forward Deployed Engineer, you will be the technical face of the product for the company's most strategic customers. You will work directly with clients to diagnose complex problems, rapidly prototype AI-driven solutions, and translate real-world customer learnings into product improvements. Successful prototypes may be productionized and shipped as core platform features.
This role is ideal for someone who thrives in ambiguous, fast-moving environments and gets energy from solving meaningful problems alongside customers, not just behind a keyboard.
Responsibilities
- Partner directly with customers to deeply understand their workflows, pain points, and business goals
- Rapidly design and prototype AI-native solutions that demonstrate clear business value
- Collaborate cross-functionally with product managers, engineers, and customer stakeholders
- Synthesize customer insights and feed them back into platform and product strategy
- Contribute to productionizing high-impact prototypes into scalable, maintainable features
Requirements
- Around 5 years of software engineering experience, ideally in customer-facing or technically complex environments
- Strong product sense and ability to think like both an engineer and a problem solver
- Comfort operating with AI-native development workflows and a genuine belief in leveraging AI tooling as a force multiplier
- Excellent communication skills, someone who can engage confidently with technical and non-technical stakeholders
- Adaptability and a bias toward execution over perfection
- Prior experience in ecommerce, personalization, or B2B SaaS is a plus, but not required
Salary : $200,000 - $250,000