Founding Forward Deployed Engineer

About the role

You are a builder who treats engineering craft with the discipline of elite performance, working daily among peers who share that standard. In this role, you own the complete lifecycle of enterprise automation, taking messy, real-world problems from first conversation with stakeholders to a running production system delivered in days. You will architect, integrate, and deploy full-stack solutions that combine backend logic, LLM orchestration, and user interfaces into a single coherent product. Your work will span deep technical implementation and high-touch client interaction, where earning trust is as important as writing code. You will translate ambiguous process requirements into concrete technical designs, balancing speed, quality, and cost under real pressure. Feedback from users and systems will flow in quickly, and you will iterate relentlessly until the solution behaves reliably in the customer's environment. Ultimately, you will ship durable, observable systems that clients depend on, while bringing back reusable patterns that make the next engagement even faster.

Key facts

What you'll do

Sit with end-users, process owners, and client engineers to uncover the real workflow and the underlying problem that needs solving.

Translate the desired future state into a concrete technical solution, defining architecture, data models, integrations, agent behaviors, and workflows that can be built in days and weeks.

Build full-stack capabilities using TypeScript for backend services, designing integrations, orchestrating LLM workflows, and implementing evaluation frameworks.

Demonstrate early and often by placing working software directly in front of users, then folding their feedback into rapid next iterations.

Make real-time trade-offs between build versus buy versus configure, choosing the fastest path to value using existing platform capabilities where appropriate.

Own observability, monitoring, and evaluation of deployed systems, iterating until performance meets expectations in actual customer conditions.

Earn the trust of client engineering and security teams by managing API access, data flows, deployment practices, and formal reviews with professionalism.

Extract reusable patterns such as prompt structures, integration templates, and component architectures so that future engagements can ship with higher speed and lower risk.

Requirements

You come from a builder background with a track record of taking systems from zero to production and keeping them operational over time.

You are deeply fluent with modern AI tooling, including LLM APIs, function and tool calling, agent frameworks, evaluation methods, and prompt engineering as a disciplined practice.

You write strong TypeScript backend code and are comfortable working with APIs, authentication schemes, message queues, and legacy enterprise systems.

You use AI development tools such as Claude Code or Cursor daily, leveraging them to ship significantly faster than a traditional engineering workflow would allow.

You possess a customer-facing mindset, genuinely enjoying time in the room with users, asking sharp questions, and respectfully pushing back when requirements are unclear or misaligned.

You operate comfortably with speed and ambiguity, moving quickly into unfamiliar business domains and returning with a working prototype that validates understanding.

You communicate clearly in English and are fluent in German, which is a valuable asset for working with European clients.

You must have direct experience automating business processes in ERP environments such as SAP, Microsoft Dynamics, Oracle, or NetSuite, or a prior background in consulting, solutions engineering, or founding and building products end-to-end.

Nice to have

Only items explicitly indicated in the source are preferred attributes, and no additional preferences are added here.

Practical notes

The engagement is full time, and the position is based in Zurich.

You are expected to work from the Zurich location as part of the team embedded with customers in the region.

No specific visa or travel details are provided in the source material.

No application deadline is communicated in the source.

Benefits

Solve real problems, fast by joining a high-growth deep-tech startup that automates workflows for global industry leaders.

Work at the frontier with state-of-the-art technology, including the latest LLMs, agent frameworks, and AI coding tools, supported by budget and mandate to stay current.

Build with modern tools and avoid legacy stack baggage, enabling clean architecture and fast iteration.

Take big responsibility early, owning customer engagements from architecture through delivery and relationship management from day one.

Control your own growth path in a rapidly scaling, internationally expanding startup where your development trajectory is shaped by your impact.

Grow alongside exceptional colleagues with outstanding academic backgrounds and prior career experiences that challenge and elevate your own standards.