What are the responsibilities and job description for the Forward Deployed Engineer - AI Transformation position at Ikuto?
Forward Deployed Engineer (AI Transformation) | NYC (On-Site) | OTE $270K - $300K
Are you a highly ambitious, elite Full-Stack Engineer who feels restricted by the slow pace of big tech? Are you ready to bet on yourself, ship production-grade AI at frontier speeds, and drastically out-earn your current base salary?
We are partnering with a phenomenal, hyper-growth AI Transformation Lab based in NYC to find a number of exceptional Forward Deployed Engineers.
The Company & Trajectory 📈
This isn’t your average consultancy, and it’s not a slow product shop. Backed by highly influential tech founders and official partnerships with industry giants like OpenAI and Anthropic, they are effectively building the "Palantir-esque" operating system for enterprise AI.
- The Growth: Insanely profitable. They scaled from 0 to 40 employees in just over a year, and are on track to hit 150–200 by the end of the year.
- The Competition: They are consistently going toe-to-toe with incumbents like McKinsey, Accenture, and Palantir... and winning.
- The Future: Funded entirely by their own massive profits, they are incubating internal product labs and spinning out joint ventures with massive distribution partners. Equity programs are also currently being rolled out.
The Role & Impact 🧠
As a Forward Deployed Engineer, you will own end-to-end builds of complex, agentic AI workflows for household-name enterprise clients (across professional sports teams, private equity, retail, and entertainment).
- C-Suite Exposure: You will work directly with CEOs and CIOs of Fortune 500 companies to solve their highest-stakes technical challenges.
- Extreme Velocity: You will build, architect, and deploy production-ready AI systems utilizing the latest frontier tools (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex).
- True Autonomy: No billable hours or micro-managed timelines. Success is merit-based and tied entirely to the engineering outcomes and complexity you ship.
The Compensation Model 💰
This company operates on a unique, highly meritocratic model built for engineers who want a high-upside financial trajectory:
- Base: $180,000.
- Uncapped Quarterly Bonuses: Performance is tied to engineering output (story points). Engineers in good standing comfortably clear $270K to $300K total compensation, with top performers making significantly more.
Who You Are (Requirements) 🛠️
This team is a "Swiss Army knife" of elite product builders (many of whom are former founders). To fit in, you must meet the following criteria:
- Experience: 3 years of software engineering experience with an undeniable track record of personally writing and shipping complex, substantial production code.
- Technical Breadth: You are a true, practical Full-Stack Engineer. (Note: This is a product engineering role; pure ML/Data or pure academic backgrounds will not fit).
- Infrastructure Depth: Hands-on experience working directly with major cloud infrastructure providers (AWS, GCP, or Azure) to host backends in production.
- MINDSET: High agency, high pace. You thrive in a demanding, high-energy environment. This is an on-site role (5 days/week) in NYC.
Salary : $180,000 - $300,000