Location: New York, NY — On-site
Experience: 3–6 years
Travel: Frequent travel to portfolio company sites
About the Role
We are looking for a hands-on Forward Deployed Engineer to work directly with Beacon's portfolio companies and build software that solves real operational problems.
This is not a traditional consulting or solutions role. You will work directly with company operators to understand how their business works, identify high-value opportunities for software and AI, and then build, deploy, and operate the solution yourself.
The ideal candidate is a strong software engineer who enjoys working close to users, is comfortable with ambiguity, and has experience building production applications using modern AI/LLM technologies.
What You'll Do
- Work directly with portfolio company teams to understand their operations and identify high-impact workflows that can be improved through software and AI.
- Build and deploy production applications, integrations, and AI-powered workflows from initial concept through launch.
- Work across the stack as needed, including backend services, APIs, frontend applications, data, and AI/LLM functionality.
- Integrate with existing systems and data sources to make solutions useful in real operating environments.
- Test, monitor, evaluate, and improve deployed AI-powered systems based on real-world results.
- Work directly with non-technical stakeholders and company leaders to understand problems, explain technical solutions, and build trust.
- Take ownership of deployments after launch, troubleshoot issues, and continuously improve the systems you build.
- Identify patterns across portfolio companies and turn successful solutions into reusable approaches for future deployments.
What We're Looking For
- 3–6 years of professional software engineering experience.
- Strong hands-on programming ability in Python or TypeScript.
- Experience building and shipping production software, not just prototypes or proof-of-concepts.
- Experience building applications that use LLMs, generative AI, AI APIs, RAG, or similar AI technologies.
- Comfortable working across the stack and taking ownership of an application from idea through production.
- Experience working directly with customers, clients, users, or business stakeholders is highly valuable.
- Strong problem-solving ability and comfort working with ambiguous requirements.
- Ability to understand a business problem and translate it into a practical technical solution.
- Strong communication skills and the ability to work effectively with both technical and non-technical people.
- Based in or willing to relocate to New York, NY.
- Comfortable traveling frequently to portfolio company locations.
Technical Environment
The role may involve technologies including:
Python, TypeScript, React, SQL, LLMs, generative AI, AI APIs, agentic workflows, Snowflake, Databricks, Apache Iceberg, and event-driven systems.
You do not need to have worked with every technology listed. Strong software engineering fundamentals, production experience, and the ability to learn quickly are more important.
Who Will Do Well in This Role
This role is a strong fit for engineers who have worked in environments where they had to figure things out and build the solution themselves.
Relevant backgrounds may include:
- Forward Deployed Engineer
- Product Engineer
- Full-Stack Software Engineer
- Customer Engineer
- Solutions Engineer with substantial hands-on coding
- Software Engineer at an early-stage or high-growth company
- Founding Engineer
- AI / LLM application engineer with strong software engineering experience
The common thread is hands-on ownership: you can understand a real-world problem, write the software, work with the people using it, and get the solution into production.
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