Founding Forward Deployed Engineer to solve the hardest problem in applied AI

Job Description

Commercial teams run on messy data, legacy systems, and slow workflows. Everyone talks about the AI transformation, but very few companies can actually do it. Why? Because the hard part isn’t the model, it’s the data, the orchestration, and the outcomes.

Mission

Before, the hard part was building enterprise software. Today, the real challenge is delivering outcomes in environments where customer data is scattered, inconsistent, and locked inside tools that don’t talk to each other. Where AI initiatives fail not because the models are weak, but because organizations lack AI data readiness: the ability to turn messy, chaotic customer data into clean, structured fuel that AI systems can actually trust. And where commercial teams are expected to bridge that gap themselves, without the orchestration, collaboration, or technical depth required to make it work at scale.

Today, commercial teams don’t have the orchestration, collaboration, or technical depth to bridge this gap on their own. This is the inaccessible problem: turning real-world complexity into scalable, repeatable AI-powered outcomes.

Our distinct approach

Planhat’s AI Deployment Program (ADP) team works directly with modern, high-velocity companies that want to be at the frontier of applied AI. We deploy, refine, and scale AI capabilities inside real commercial organizations and not in theory, not in slides, but in production.

And Forward Deployed Engineers (FDEs) are the heart of it. Joining Planhat as a Founding FDE at this moment is a unique professional accelerant with the possibility to:

• Work with companies that are early adopters of AI and want to build the future with us.
• Gain experience in data engineering, systems design, AI deployment, workflow automation, and commercial operations - all at once.
• Become fluent in applied AI: not model research, but the much harder, much rarer skill of deploying AI that actually works.
• Develop technical intuition that is extremely rare in the market, the type that opens doors to engineering leadership, product architecture, or applied AI roles in any industry.
• Shape a brand-new discipline. FDE is to this decade what full-stack engineering was to the previous one.
• Planhat has years of hands-on experience working with some of the most data-rich, cutting-edge commercial teams in the world
• The ADP team is early-stage, high-trust, and has the autonomy to shape its own roadmap and operating model.

Apart from foundational AI research, we believe the FDE role is the hardest and most important problem in AI right now. You’re building the frontier of applied AI. Not watching it from the sidelines.

Level and expectations

As our Founding FDE, you’ll embed with customers, understand how their business and systems actually work, and engineer the data pipelines, workflows, and automations that make AI useful and valuable.

This isn’t traditional consulting. And it’s not back-office engineering. It’s applied problem-solving in the real world, where your decisions directly impact, revenue, retention, and business outcomes.

We’re looking for an individual with:

• 2–4 years of experience in consulting, data engineering, software engineering, or similar technical roles.
• Comfort working directly with customers and operating in ambiguous environments.
• Curiosity, ownership, and interest in building something new.
• Willingness to travel to customer sites.
• Curiosity, ownership, and interest in building something new.
• The most important trait is the ability to learn fast.

Technology

• Strong foundation in SQL and data modeling.
• Experience with Python and/or other scripting languages.
• Experience integrating with APIs (REST / GraphQL).
• Familiarity with data pipelines, ETL / ELT, or workflow automation (bonus, not required).

If we succeed, we will redefine how commercial organizations operate. You’ll be part of building the next generation of enterprise software and shaping a new category, Forward Deployment Engineering, at a moment when it’s just beginning to emerge. Your work will help companies transition into the AI era with clarity, speed, and real outcomes. Planhat has been built for scale and for longevity, and ADP is something genuinely new, not just for us, but for the entire industry. If that excites you, we’d love to meet you.