Forward Deployed Engineer
At a glance
Mid-level Software Engineering role at Ampersand. San Francisco · full-time · $150,000–$205,000 base.
techroles summary, based on the employer's posting.
What you'll do
- Guide strategic customers from initial discovery through implementation and successful use of the product
- Study each customer’s systems, data, goals, and limits, then recommend approaches their teams can maintain
- Write production code within customer projects when implementation work calls for it
- Bring customer-found bugs, product gaps, and recurring patterns to the core engineering team
- Turn deployment lessons into reusable documentation, examples, playbooks, and product changes
What you bring
- At least four years in software engineering, solutions engineering, or customer-facing technical work
- You can write production-quality code and adapt to codebases you have not worked in before
- You have helped customers resolve technical challenges and achieve practical outcomes
- You understand APIs, integrations, distributed systems, or cloud architectures
Who this fits
This mid-level role suits an engineer who likes varied customer implementations and can move between hands-on coding, technical guidance, and customer partnership. You’ll work closely with strategic customers and the core engineering team. The role is hybrid in San Francisco.
From the employer
Our Mission
At Ampersand, we are building scalable integration infrastructure that delivers real-time context to AI agents in seconds. Our declarative platform, 150+ open-source connectors, and embeddable UI components give developers the building blocks they need to ship deep, bidirectional integrations.
We power cutting-edge AI companies like 11x, Orb, Square, and Crunchbase. Almost every engineering team that has evaluated us against other solutions has chosen to use Ampersand. As our product and brand evolve, we're looking for great people to join our experienced team of former Firebase, AWS, Meta and Square engineers and operators.
About Us
Ampersand was founded in 2022 by Ayan Barua and Lauren Long — two engineers and repeat founders with a rare combination of developer tools and SaaS experience. You can learn more about our full team here.
We've raised Series A funding from top-tier investors known for their early-stage bets on generational companies like Anthropic, Apple, Twilio, Supabase, and Vercel.
Together, we believe:
This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to build the connectivity infrastructure for AI. Seizing this moment requires passion, hard work, and continuous learning. At the same time, this is a marathon, not a sprint.
Velocity comes from great strategic decisions, not doing the 99 things you don't have to do.
In five core values that shape how we work every day: Craft, Customer Empathy, Ownership Mindset, Velocity, and Humility.
The Role
We're hiring a Forward Deployed Engineer to work directly inside customer environments, implementing and extending Ampersand in a way that makes each deployment succeed and teaches us something we can build on.
This role is part engineer, part technical advisor, part trusted partner. You'll work closely with strategic customers from kickoff through delivery, write production code when the work calls for it, and bring what you learn back to the core product and engineering team. If you enjoy working on challenges where no two implementations look the same, this could be a good role for you.
What You’ll Own
Customer Deployments — Lead end-to-end technical implementations with strategic customers, from discovery through successful adoption.
Technical Recommendations — Understand each customer's stack, integration goals, data model, and constraints — then advise on approaches that are maintainable, scalable, and easy for their team to operate long-term.
Production Code — Write production-quality code inside customer codebases when the work calls for it. You're comfortable in unfamiliar environments and hold a high bar for what you ship.
Engineering Partnership — Partner with the core engineering team to surface product gaps, bugs, and recurring implementation patterns from the field.
Knowledge Sharing — Turn customer-specific learnings into reusable improvements: docs, examples, playbooks, and direct product contributions.
Customer Partnership — Provide white-glove support and serve as a genuine thought partner to customer engineering and product teams — not just a vendor contact.
What You’ll Bring
4+ years of software engineering, solutions engineering, or customer-facing technical experience
Strong development fundamentals — you write production-quality code and are comfortable inside unfamiliar codebases
Direct experience working with customers to solve technical problems and deliver outcomes
Solid understanding of APIs, integrations, distributed systems, or cloud-based architectures
Clear communicator with both technical and non-technical stakeholders
You take responsibility for outcomes from discovery through delivery — not just your slice of the work
Experience with developer tools, infrastructure platforms, enterprise software, or AI-native products is a strong plus
Familiarity with CRM, ERP, fintech, or other business systems is a bonus
The Perks
Competitive salary and meaningful equity
Medical, dental, and vision insurance, optional HSA
401(k) with company match
Commuter benefits
Free team lunch on in-office days
Flexible PTO (2–4 weeks recommended), plus 11 company holidays and separate paid sick leave
Paid parental leave: 16 weeks for birthing parents, 8 weeks for non-birthing parents (covers birth, adoption, foster, and surrogacy)
Compassionate leave: up to 10 paid days for family building, loss, caregiving, and other major life events
Team socials and retreats
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