Forward Deployed Engineer

The Role We’re hiring a Forward Deployed Engineer to help bring AI capabilities into real-world physical environments. This role is ideal for someone who enjoys working directly with customers, solving messy operational challenges, and shipping practical AI-powered solutions. You won’t be working in isolation on research problems — you’ll be partnering with customers and internal teams to implement solutions that create measurable value. You’ll work closely with senior GTM leadership and product engineering to deploy, refine, and scale AI-driven workflows across our customer base. Over time, you’ll grow into deeper ownership of deployments and strategic accounts. What You’ll Do Customer Deployment & Implementation - Support and implement end-to-end AI deployments for customers, from discovery through production rollout - Participate in on-site customer engagements (approximately 25–35% travel) - Translate customer operational needs into technical requirements and working solutions - Troubleshoot and resolve production issues in collaboration with engineering - Help document best practices and implementation playbooks AI Solutions in Production - Build and iterate on LLM-powered workflows, RAG pipelines, and AI-assisted automation tools - Prototype quickly while balancing reliability and performance - Integrate with customer systems and APIs - Navigate real-world physical constraints (latency, connectivity, hardware limitations) - Contribute reusable components that accelerate future deployments - Support existing customers and resolve their potential issues Cross-Functional Collaboration - Partner with product engineering to relay field feedback and improve platform capabilities - Support technical conversations during customer engagements - Help enable customer teams through documentation and training materials - Contribute insights that shape product roadmap and deployment strategy Who You Are Required Experience - 2–4 years in a customer-facing technical role (Solutions Engineering, Implementation Engineering, Technical Support Engineering, or similar) - Exposure to LLMs, prompt engineering, or AI/ML workflows (production experience a plus but not required) and appetite working with AI tools - Experience deploying technical solutions into production environments - Strong programming skills in Python or TypeScript - Comfortable working in ambiguity and learning new domains quickly - Willingness to travel for customer deployments (25–35%) Nice to Have - Experience integrating APIs and building full-stack solutions - Familiarity with React or SQL - Exposure to robotics or physical systems (ROS, AMRs, industrial automation, etc.) - Experience at a startup or in a fast-paced environment - Background working with operational or industrial customers Who Will Thrive in This Role - Builders who prefer shipping working solutions over debating theoretical ones - Engineers who enjoy interacting with customers and seeing their work deployed in the real world - Curious generalists who can go from debugging logs to discussing workflow improvements - Team players who collaborate closely across engineering, product, and GTM Salary range for this role is $120,000-$140,000 based on experience and geographical location. Please Note: This position is remote, however, Formant only hires employees in the states of:  AZ, CA, CO, IL, KS, MA, NY, OK, OR, and PA.