⚡ Hiring Ex-Founders & Battle-Scarred Engineers as Forward Deployed Engineers — Across Multiple Startups
At Dynamism, we partner with breakout startups backed by Sequoia, a16z, General Catalyst, OpenAI, Founders Fund, Lightspeed, Bessemer, Pioneer Fund, and Y Combinator to find them Forward Deployed Engineers — the people who embed with enterprise customers, ship custom integrations, and own the relationship from first call to expansion.
This single application funnels you into all of our active FDE roles — we'll match you to the right founder, stage, and stack based on your background.
💻 Location: SF (in-person or hybrid) + a growing number of fully remote US roles
💰 Comp Range: $250K–$450K base + 0.1%–2.0% equity (varies by company & stage)
🌍 Stage: Seed to Series B
🛠️ Common Stack: Python, TypeScript, SDK/API integration, browser automation, evals frameworks, agentic systems
🧠 AI-Native: Most teams use Claude Code, Cursor, and agentic workflows daily
🏢 The kinds of companies we place FDEs at
• An AI safety certification company — "SOC 2 for AI agents" — certifying and insuring the world's most advanced agentic AI products. Backed by NFDG (Nat Friedman) and an Anthropic co-founder.
• A frontier RL training infrastructure startup powering the major AI labs. Backed by Sequoia, Menlo, BCV, and SV Angel.
• An AI-native software roll-up ("Constellation Software for the AI era") acquiring a vertical SaaS company every two weeks. $1B valuation, backed by General Catalyst, Lightspeed, and D1 Capital.
• A natural-language runbook platform automating Fortune 500 compliance and operations. Backed by OpenAI and Founders Fund.
• AI agents for regulated insurance — Series A, top-tier backers.
• AI-native engineering tooling — seed-stage with frontier-lab backers.
• AI evaluation infrastructure for agentic systems.
• Vertical AI for legal workflows — automating elite-firm work.
• Deployment & solutions infrastructure built specifically for AI products.
Past Dynamism placements include FDEs and founding engineers at Replit, Vapi, ElevenLabs, Meanwhile, and others.
Roles We're Hiring For
• Founding Forward Deployed Engineer
• Forward Deployed Engineer (mid–senior)
• Solutions Engineer / Deployment Strategist
• Customer Engineer / Technical Account Engineer
• Founding Customer-Facing Technical Hire (#1 or #2)
� The Day-to-Day of an FDE
• Act as an extension of the CTO/CEO — engage directly with engineering and executive leadership at large enterprise clients. You are the senior technical face of the company in the room.
• Lead the company's most critical customer relationships and scale them — turn early POCs into enterprise expansions, multi-year contracts, and reference accounts.
• Embed deeply with customer engineering & product teams — own the technical relationship from first call through go-live and beyond.
• Audit the customer's codebase, infrastructure, and workflows — identify the integration paths that move the needle fastest.
• Build custom integrations — SDK, API, browser automation, data pipelines, CLI tooling, internal admin UIs. Whatever ships outcomes.
• Design and run technical evaluations — eval sets, red-team campaigns, benchmark suites, regression harnesses (varies by company).
• Translate ambiguous customer needs into shipped features — both inside the customer and back into product roadmap.
• Run technical sales calls and POC scoping with prospective customers — close deals with technical credibility.
• Own KPIs end-to-end — time-to-go-live, expansion, retention, revenue impact. You're measured on outcomes, not output.
• Handle 3–5 customers in parallel — build reusable playbooks as you scale to 10+.
• Loop customer signal back into product — be the most senior technical voice of the field, and shape the roadmap accordingly.
What These Roles Have in Common
🤝 You'll work shoulder-to-shoulder with founders — often as the first customer-facing technical hire.
🛠️ You'll be both builder and consultant — half the week heads-down in code, half the week with customers.
📈 You'll compound your impact — every integration, eval framework, and playbook you build becomes the template for the next customer.
🚀 You'll operate with extreme ownership — no manual, no backup, just the field and the product.
You Might Be a Fit If You…
• Have 3–10+ years in customer-facing technical roles — FDE, Solutions Eng, TAM, founding eng with field exposure
• Are a strong coder — fluent in Python or TypeScript, polyglot enough to ramp into any stack
• Have founder DNA — comfortable with ambiguity, default to ownership, no playbook
• Are AI-native — actively use Claude / GPT / Cursor / agentic tooling
• Care deeply about shipping for real customers — not building in a vacuum
• Can hold your own in a sales call and a code review
Bonus If You've…
✅ Been a founder, co-founder, or founding engineer — built, ran, sold, or wound down a company
✅ Worked as an FDE at Palantir, Scale AI, Anduril, or similar — you know the motion
✅ Done AI evals, red-teaming, or safety work
✅ Built or scaled 0→1 enterprise integrations
✅ Got regulated-industry chops — financial services, compliance, insurance, healthcare
✅ Maintained side projects, blogs, or open-source — "work is play" signal
🚀 Why Dynamism
Joining Dynamism means stepping into a network of the best: from exited YC CTOs to founding engineers from unicorns like Brex, Scale AI, and Retool, and Quant PhDs who've crushed Presidents Club. We vouch for you and connect you directly with the founders — no black holes, just fast-tracked interviews tailored to your background.