Company
Optimized
Annual salary
$175k – $255k/yr
Location
San Francisco, CA
Listed
72d ago
- Experience:
- 1 to 5 years
- Workplace:
- 5 days in-office in San Francisco, CA
- Visa:
- Visa sponsorship not available
- Equity:
- Competitive equity
On-site in San Francisco, CA. Visa sponsorship not available.
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About this Role
We are looking for a Founding Forward Deployed Engineer with 1, 5 years of experience to own the customer-facing build at Optimized, embedding AI agents directly into the procurement and supply chain operations of Fortune 500 manufacturers. You'll be the engineer in the field: shipping production code, scoping new workflows with existing customers, and building the deployment motion from the ground up alongside the founding team.
What you need
- Full-stack engineering caliber, can ship production code independently in enterprise environments (pure solutions engineers without strong engineering depth are a red flag)
- Customer-facing deployment experience, has owned end-to-end technical deployments with real operators, not just internal feature shipping
- Strong communicator with a curious, disciplined mindset, asks questions to build an accurate mental model before jumping to solutions
- Background at a growth-stage startup or forward-deployed role (e.g. Palantir, Gecko Robotics, Sierra, or similar); pure Big Tech backgrounds are noisy
- Based in San Francisco and able to work 5 days/week in-person; must be comfortable with international travel (~15, 30%)
What will you be doing?
Own relationships with existing manufacturing customers day-to-day, working closely with their IT, supply chain, and procurement teams to identify and scope new workflows and use cases
Build and ship production code in customer environments, extending the platform to meet customer needs in a way that scales across the broader customer base
Take new deployments from discovery through go-live, owning outcomes (inventory, sourcing efficiency, forecast accuracy) end-to-end
Travel on-site to manufacturer facilities (~15, 30% of the time, including internationally to Europe and Asia) to embed alongside operators and earn the trust that makes agents stick
Close the loop with the platform engineering team, bringing field learnings back to make the next deployment faster and more reliable
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I apply for the Founding Forward Deployed Engineer (US) role at Optimized? +
Use the Apply for a referral button on this page to send us your LinkedIn and CV. If your experience fits, we'll introduce you to the recruiter filling this role. They'll email you to check you're interested, then put you forward for this job or others that suit you better. It's free.
What does this Optimized role pay? +
The listing gives $175k – $255k/yr.
Is this role remote? +
The listing gives the location as San Francisco, CA. 5 days in-office in San Francisco, CA. Visa sponsorship not available.
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