Forward Deployed Engineer

Department: Engineering + Product

Location: San Francisco

Compensation: $89K – $205K • Offers Equity

Employment Type: FullTime

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, were 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.

Weve 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 dont have to do.

• In five core values that shape how we work every day: Craft, Customer Empathy, Ownership Mindset, Velocity, and Humility.

The Role

Were 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. Youll 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 customers 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. Youre 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 equity

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance

• Free lunch on in-office days (Mon/Tue/Thu)

• 401(k) with company match, commuter benefits, HSA

• Up to 4 weeks PTO

• Team socials and retreats