Head of Engineering

Head of Engineering / Head of Forward Deployed Engineering

Onsite SF or NYC - $200k-$350k early stage strong equity

A frontier lab building next generation intelligence systems is hiring a Head of Engineering / Head of Forward Deployed Engineering to build and scale the applied AI function.

Sub 100 today, scaling quickly over the next 12 months. Forward Deployed org will grow fast alongside enterprise demand, working on multi million dollar deployments.

Player coach role. Very hands on with clear ownership of building the function.

What You’ll Do:

• Build and lead the Forward Deployed Engineering org from scratch
• Stay hands on across architecture and development of AI systems
• Build AI agents from scratch and deploy agentic workflows into real environments
• Design systems across orchestration layers tool use eval loops memory and reasoning pipelines
• Architect RAG pipelines vector DB integrations and hybrid retrieval systems
• Partner directly with customers to scope and deliver high impact AI systems
• Translate ambiguous problems into deployable agent driven solutions
• Deploy across cloud VPC hybrid and on prem environments
• Hire and grow a high performance team of FDEs and applied AI engineers

What We’re Looking For:

• Strong engineering background Python TypeScript or similar
• Experience building agentic AI systems or production GenAI workflows
• Experience with AI agents orchestration frameworks tool calling or multi step reasoning
• Strong understanding of RAG embeddings retrieval and knowledge integration
• Track record shipping AI systems into production
• Experience in zero to one environments with high ownership
• Proven leadership while remaining hands on
• Strong architecture skills across modern AI infrastructure
• Customer facing or Forward Deployed experience preferred
• High agency strong bias to ship quickly