Guild.ai→
Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) at Guild.ai in San Francisco, CA
Skills
Job Description
Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE)
Location: San Francisco Bay Area (Hybrid/In-person)
Type: Full-time
Travel: Occasional travel to customer sites (up to 15-20%) may be required to deepen partnerships and lead on-site implementations.
About the Role
We are building the control plane for AI agents in teams and companies. As a Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE), you are the technical bridge between our platform and our customers' most complex workflows.
This is a high-impact engineering role embedded in a customer-facing context. You won't just demo the product; you will get deep into customer environments, understand their underlying systems, and ship production-ready agentic solutions. You will collaborate closely with sales to prove value and with product engineering to ensure the insights you gather in the field shape the future of our infrastructure.
We are looking for an engineer who is energized by customer partnership and thrives on seeing their code solve tangible business problems in the wild.
What You’ll Own
You will lead the technical side of customer engagements end-to-end:
1. Solution Design & Implementation
Discovery: Partner with customers to map business processes to agent-based solutions.
Architecture: Design and build integration architectures that connect our platform to customer tools (e.g., Slack, GitHub, Salesforce, internal APIs).
Deployment: Implement custom workflows and agent behaviors using modern LLM frameworks (OpenAI, Anthropic, etc.).
2. Full-Stack Engineering
Custom Tooling: Build supporting services, scripts, and interfaces to deliver seamless customer solutions.
Technical Breadth: Work across the stack (Python, TypeScript, React) as the situation demands.
Cloud Operations: Operate comfortably within cloud-native environments (GCP, AWS, Kubernetes).
3. Product Influence & Feedback Loop
Insights: Translate field learnings into concrete product requirements and platform features.
Scalability: Identify patterns across engagements to build reusable templates and integration libraries.
Collaboration: Work alongside the core engineering team to close the loop between customer needs and the platform roadmap.
4. Strategic Sales Partnership
Technical Authority: Support sales with deep technical expertise, including architecture reviews and proof-of-concept builds.
Trust Building: Act as a trusted advisor to customer engineering and IT teams.
What We’re Looking For
We recognize that "Forward Deployed" is a unique profile. You might be a software engineer who loves the "why" behind the code and wants to be closer to the user, or a highly technical solutions engineer who prefers building to slide-decks.
Core Requirements
Engineering Foundation: 3+ years of experience in software engineering, with a focus on full-stack development (Python, TypeScript).
Integrations Expert: Deep comfort working with third-party APIs, authentication protocols, and enterprise systems.
Problem Solver: Ability to navigate ambiguous requirements and translate complex business needs into clean, maintainable technical solutions.
Communicator: You can explain complex infrastructure to non-technical stakeholders while maintaining high technical credibility with developers.
Resourcefulness: A "figure it out" mindset—you are comfortable shipping solutions in fast-paced, early-stage environments.
Bonus Points
Experience building with LLM APIs or agentic frameworks.
Background in developer tools, infrastructure, or enterprise SaaS.
Familiarity with Kubernetes and cloud-native scaling.
Who Thrives Here
Builders who are energized—not drained—by direct customer interaction.
Engineers who want to see their work land and solve tangible problems.
Generalists who enjoy context-switching between a deep-dive architectural session and a strategic customer call.
Why This Role?
You’ll be the person who makes AI agents work for the world’s most innovative teams. You won't just be handing off requirements; you'll be building the future of work, one deployment at a time.