Why This Job is Featured on The SaaS Jobs
This Founding Forward Deployed Engineer role sits at a distinctive intersection in SaaS: product creation driven by real enterprise deployments. The forward deployed model is increasingly common in AI-native platforms, where customer environments, data realities, and workflow constraints directly shape what becomes a scalable product capability. The remit here is not limited to implementation, but to identifying repeatable product surfaces that can graduate from a strategic account into the core platform.
From a SaaS career standpoint, the role builds durable strengths in discovery, iteration, and shipping under ambiguity, with tight feedback loops from executive stakeholders. It also develops judgment around what is truly generalizable in enterprise settings, a critical skill for turning one-off solutions into roadmap-worthy features. Experience collaborating closely with product and engineering while operating in the field is broadly transferable across enterprise SaaS, especially in AI, search, and workflow automation categories.
This position tends to suit engineers who prefer customer-proximate building, can switch between code and business problem framing, and are comfortable being accountable for outcomes rather than tickets. It is a strong match for someone early to mid-career who has shipped production software and wants exposure to 0-to-1 product work with meaningful constraints and visibility.
The section above is editorial commentary from The SaaS Jobs, provided to help SaaS professionals understand the role in a broader industry context.
Job Description
About the Role:
You'll join as a founding member of Glean's forward deployed team and operate with the autonomy and accountability of a founder. Your job is to discover and build Glean's next generation of product surfaces, working in a pod with Forward Deployed PMs directly with the C-suite of the world's most influential companies and with Glean's own engineering and product teams.
Glean is a fully horizontal AI platform - and that scope is what makes this role unique. You won't be configuring existing products or optimizing within defined constraints. You'll identify the biggest unsolved business problems at our most strategic customers, build entirely new products to solve them, and in doing so shape what Glean becomes. The best of what you build ships to every Glean customer in the world. You get founder-level ownership with Glean's resources, relationships, and scale behind you.
You will:
- Discover and build Glean's next product surfaces: Your primary job is 0-to-1 product creation. Nothing about what you're building is predefined - you'll work with your FDPM to identify where Glean's platform can be extended to solve problems no product currently solves, then design and ship it. What you build becomes what Glean ships.
- Lead deep opportunity discovery: Before you write a line of code, you go deep on the business. What's structurally broken? Where is the biggest concentration of unsolved value? What's actually buildable, and what's the fastest path to something real that can be tested and learned from? You'll form strong hypotheses alongside your FDPM and pressure-test them directly with the people who have to live with the outcome.
- Be a technical partner to the C-suite: You'll earn trust at the highest levels of your customer organizations - not just with technical teams, but with the executives who are accountable for outcomes. You can explain what you're building, why it will work, and what the risks are to anyone in the room.
- Scale what works Once something works, you'll make it repeatable - working closely with the core R&D team to ensure the product is scalable
- Stay at the frontier with Glean's R&D team: You'll work closely with Glean's core engineering and product teams, staying ahead of what's possible on the platform and actively shaping how its capabilities evolve. What you encounter in the field directly informs what gets built next.
About you:
- You think like a founder. When you walk into a customer, you're curious about the business, digging into what's broken, and figuring out what to build that doesn't yet exist. You're scrappy and resourceful, you move fast enough to learn, and you're as comfortable in a strategic discussion with a CEO as you are deep in a codebase. You've shipped actual products that real people use, that drove real outcomes - and you want to do it at a higher level of ambition.
- 0-to-1 build track record: You've built production software from scratch in ambiguous environments. You can point to something that didn't exist before you showed up and is now used by real people at scale.
- Production AI experience: You've shipped AI-powered solutions in the real world - prompt engineering, agent development, evaluation frameworks, deployment at scale. Not just prototypes.
- Full-stack technical depth: Strong programming skills across the stack with a deep understanding of and experience with how enterprise systems actually work.
- Business acumen: You can walk into a customer, identify where the real problems are, and connect that diagnosis to a product hypothesis - without being handed a brief.
- Customer instinct: You build trust quickly at every level of an organization, communicate with clarity, and know how to tailor your depth to the room.
- Builder's judgment: You know what's actually buildable, how long it will take, and when to simplify scope to get something real into production faster. You spot problems early and solve them independently.
- Curiosity and scrappiness: You're driven to understand problems deeply before solving them, and resourceful enough to find a path forward when none is obvious.
- Experience: 4+ years in technical roles with a track record of shipping production software. Former technical founders are strongly encouraged to apply.
- Willingness to travel: This role requires 25–50% travel.
- Nice to Have:
- Experience as a founder, at a top-tier technology company, or in a forward deployed engineering role.
- A technical degree in CS, engineering, math, or a related field.
- Deep familiarity with LLMs, retrieval systems, and evaluation frameworks.
- Experience driving technology adoption inside large enterprises.
Location:
- This role is hybrid (3-4 days a week in our NYC office)
- This role requires 25-50% travel
Compensation & Benefits:
The standard range for this position is $160,000-$270,000 annually. Compensation offered will be determined by factors such as location, level, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. Certain roles may be eligible for variable compensation, equity, and benefits. Special Note: This range encompasses varying levels of the role, you will be assessed for your level during the interview process.
We offer a comprehensive benefits package including competitive compensation, Medical, Vision, and Dental coverage, generous time-off policy, and the opportunity to contribute to your 401k plan to support your long-term goals. When you join, you'll receive a home office improvement stipend, as well as an annual education and wellness stipends to support your growth and wellbeing. We foster a vibrant company culture through regular events, and provide healthy lunches daily to keep you fueled and focused.
We are a diverse bunch of people and we want to continue to attract and retain a diverse range of people into our organization. We're committed to an inclusive and diverse company. We do not discriminate based on gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, civil or family status, age, disability, or race.
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