Member of Deployed Staff, Forward Deployed Engineer
Factory is hiring a Member of Deployed Staff, Forward Deployed Engineer in San Francisco, United States. Level rates it ; you can apply on Level.
AI in this role
About Factory
Our mission is to create a world where software builds and improves itself.
We build the platform for self-improving software development, helping the world's largest enterprise engineering teams turn their organizations into autonomous software factories. Customers including Nvidia, Blackstone, Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), Palo Alto Networks, Adobe, and T-Mobile run Factory to ship code, review PRs, run tests, and deploy continuously - getting smarter with every cycle.
In 2026, we raised $200M at a $5B valuation, bringing our total funding to over $400M. We are backed by world-class investors and operators including Khosla Ventures, Sequoia, Blackstone, Ali Ghodsi (CEO of Databricks), and Frank Slootman (Former CEO of Snowflake).
About the Role
Factory is on the cutting edge of software development. We create and deploy AI solutions to accelerate engineering workflows across the world’s most innovative companies. We are actively looking for Member of Deployed Staff, Forward Deployed Engineers to ensure our customers have seamless experiences with Factory’s technology, optimizing integration to drive meaningful results—from improved developer efficiency to accelerated product delivery.
As our customer base rapidly grows, you’ll report directly to the CEO and lead Factory’s highest-impact customer implementations and special engineering projects. This role sits at the intersection of engineering, product strategy, customer success, and go-to-market, offering you the deepest exposure across multiple aspects of our business.
What you will do and achieve
Lead end-to-end implementation and integration of Factory’s platform into customer engineering environments, directly partnering with customer teams to design robust, optimized workflows and build successful, long-term partnerships
Act as the CEO's primary technical lead on customer engagements, frequently traveling on-site to champion rapid product adoption, solve complex engineering challenges, and reduce customer time-to-value
Lead special engineering projects that expand Factory’s product capabilities, directly influencing the product roadmap and ensuring alignment with customer needs
Respond rapidly to customer needs, which may include integrating with new systems, troubleshooting and fixing critical issues in diverse codebases, or innovating on the fly to leverage Factory in novel ways that solve customers' specific problems.
Deeply understand our customers’ use cases and develop the tooling and documentation necessary to support their growth at scale
Work closely with Product, Engineering, Sales and Operations, acting as a bridge between our customers and our internal teams, translating customer feedback into actionable product improvements and collaborating closely with internal teams to implement these enhancements swiftly and efficiently
Continuously learn and stay updated on the latest in software development practices, tools, and technologies to ensure Factory remains at the forefront of automation and AI in engineering
Qualifications
Ideal candidates will have 3-10 years of experience, preferably with a background in companies known for their innovation in AI and software engineering, such as Palantir, OpenAI, Hugging Face, Applied Intuition, and Glean
Demonstrable capability to quickly grasp new technologies, programming languages, and software development practices. Proficiency across a broad tech stack is highly valued, as is the ability to make code changes across various parts of the Factory codebase
Strong problem-solving abilities, including quickly diagnosing, debugging, and resolving technical challenges in customer-facing roles
Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with proven experience building positive relationships and effectively collaborating with technical and non-technical stakeholders
A hunger for learning and a drive to continuously improve, both in terms of personal skills and the product's value to customers. Must be motivated, proactive, and capable of thriving in a fast-paced, evolving startup environment
This is an in-office position (5 days/week).
How we rate this
Member of Deployed Staff, Forward Deployed Engineer at Factory rates 68 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Works on AI (AI Level 3 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.
Works on AI. The daily work is on AI products, without building the model.
- ●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
- ●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
- ●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
- ●○○○ Little AI0 to 39
Levels come from how often the tools, models and workflows of the role are named in the posting itself. Open the description and count.
Prepare for this job
Built from this posting and from similar jobs on Level.
Skills and AI tools this role asks for
Also common in forward deployed engineer jobs at this level
Pay
- Typical forward deployed engineer job
- $182k
This posting doesn't list pay. Use the typical forward deployed engineer figure when pay comes up. See forward deployed engineer jobs
Questions you could be asked
- What's a project where you used OpenAI hands-on?
- Walk me through how you've used Hugging Face in your day-to-day work.
- What are the limits of Databricks that you've run into, and how did you work around them?
- Describe a typical day in a role like this one: which parts run through AI directly?
- If you removed AI from this role, what would be left, and how do you decide what still needs a human?
Adapt your resume
- List these exact terms on your resume: OpenAI, Hugging Face, and Databricks. An applicant tracking system matches the wording, not the idea.
- Attach one line of real, concrete experience to at least one of them. A tool named with nothing behind it rarely survives a human read.
- Show where AI is part of your daily process, not a one-off project. This role expects it to be a running habit.
Want an expert to read your CV for this job?
Free. Send your CV and the role you want next. We reply by email within 2 to 4 business days.
Get new forward deployed engineer jobs (Works on AI ●●●○ or higher) by email
One email a week with the new forward deployed engineer jobs (Works on AI ●●●○ or higher), each rated for how much AI is in the work. No recruiter spam, unsubscribe in one click.
Free. One email a week. Unsubscribe in one click.
Similar roles
Sales roles that work on AI, at other companies.
What kind of AI work fits you?
Answer 12 practical questions in about three minutes. Get a simple profile, the work it points to, and live roles to explore next.
Find my next step