Forward Deployed Engineer, AI Training Data (Redwood City, CA)
Lavendo · Full-time · Posted 1mo ago
Lavendo partners with startups and high‑growth companies to help them hire top‑tier sales, GTM, and technical talent. This role is with one of our clients; we’ll share full details about the company and interview process as we get to know you and confirm mutual fit.
Our client is a fast-growing AI infrastructure company that has built a state-of-the-art data curation platform used to train some of the most demanding deep learning models in the world. Their technology automatically curates and optimizes petabytes of training data — algorithms that are modality-agnostic and require no labels — to make model training dramatically faster and more efficient. Customers see results that speak for themselves: 7x–40x faster training, model performance equivalent to training on 10x more raw data, and smaller models (with less than half the parameters) that outperform larger ones and substantially cut deployment costs.
Backed by $57.5M raised across Seed and Series A, with investors including Microsoft, Amazon, Felicis, and AI luminaries like Geoff Hinton, Yann LeCun, and Jeff Dean, our client has built a lean team of ~60 people. This is a company already proving out results with real enterprise customers.
Foundational models are only as good as the data they're trained on. Our client exists to close the gap between raw data and truly optimized training data — without requiring labels, without adding compute cost, and without forcing customers to compromise on model quality. Every strategic account this team lands is a chance to prove that better data curation, not just bigger models, is the unlock the industry has been missing.
As Forward Deployed Engineer (Post-Sales), this is a rare role at a company small enough that your fingerprints will be on every major account, and well-funded enough that the roadmap, the compensation, and the customer roster are all already real. You'll be one of the founding members of the post-sales technical org, working directly with strategic enterprise accounts to take them from signed contract to production deployment — and shaping the playbooks that the next wave of hires will use.
If you've been looking for a role that lets you stay hands-on with distributed systems and model training while also owning the high-stakes customer relationships, this is that role.
Own end-to-end onboarding, deployment, and production rollout of the platform for strategic enterprise accounts — from first technical conversation through stabilization and beyond
Serve as the primary technical point of contact for your accounts, building long-term relationships and driving adoption across complex on-prem and hybrid environments
Design scalable, secure workflows spanning compute, storage, networking, and distributed systems across AWS, GCP, Azure, and on-prem Kubernetes
Translate ambiguous, real-world customer requirements into concrete technical architecture — there's no pre-written spec waiting for you; you help define the problem
Build the processes and playbooks for post-sales deployment from 0→1, knowing that what you build now becomes the foundation for the team scaling behind you
Partner cross-functionally with Sales, Engineering, and Research, relaying field learnings that directly shape the product roadmap
Travel to customer sites as needed (roughly 15%) to support critical deployments and high-stakes engagements
5–10 years of experience in a post-sales individual-contributor capacity, owning customer deployments as a Forward Deployed Engineer, Post-Sales Solutions Engineer/Architect, Implementation Engineer, Machine Learning Engineer, or customer-facing engineer
Hands-on machine learning and model training experience — you understand pre-training, mid-training, and post-training concepts, not just how to call an API
Real experience deploying software into enterprise customer infrastructure
Strong Python proficiency (required) and AWS proficiency (required)
A track record of owning the full post-sales enterprise lifecycle — onboarding, optimization, and everything in between
Experience building post-sales processes or playbooks from scratch
Comfort operating in ambiguous, high-stakes, and fast-moving environments — startup or high-ambiguity experience is a plus
A technical degree (CS or equivalent)
A demonstrated ability to translate messy, ambiguous customer requirements into clean, concrete architecture
Willingness to travel to customer sites as needed (roughly 15%)
Nice to have: exposure to multi-cloud environments (GCP, Azure), on-prem or hybrid Kubernetes, or broader ML tooling — not required, but a strong differentiator
Note: This role is built for people who bring both deep post-sales, customer-facing deployment experience and hands-on ML/model training expertise with measurable results. If you're strong in only one of these two areas, this likely isn't the right fit — but we'd still encourage a conversation if you're close.
Compensation: $230,000–$300,000 base plus extremely competitive equity
Health benefits: 100% covered health benefits (medical, vision, and dental)
401(k): 401(k) plan with a 4% company match
Time off: Unlimited PTO
Wellness: Annual $2,000 wellness stipend
Learning & development: Annual $1,000 learning and development stipend
In-office perks: Daily lunches and snacks provided in the office
Relocation: Relocation assistance for employees moving to the Bay Area
Real ownership: With a lean team of ~60 people, you'll be the technical owner of some of the company's most strategic customer relationships
Proven in production: You're joining a company whose product already delivers 7x–40x faster training and measurable model performance gains for real customers
Backing that matters: $57.5M raised from Microsoft, Amazon, Felicis, and AI pioneers including Geoff Hinton, Yann LeCun, and Jeff Dean
Hybrid setup: 4 days per week in the Redwood City, CA office, with the rest of the team building alongside you in person
Visa support: Open to visa transfers, including OPT and H-1B transfers
Initial Screen — Assesses background, interest, culture fit, comp expectations, and logistics
Hiring Manager Technical Screen (30 min) — Evaluates distributed systems experience, cloud infrastructure (AWS/GCP/Azure), Kubernetes, and post-sales/customer-facing mindset
Coding Screen (1 hour) — Live coding in Python with end-to-end debugging
On-site (3.5 hours) — System design/architecture discussion, technical deep dives, behavioral/stakeholder scenarios, and cross-functional interviews with Sales, Engineering, and Research
We are proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and consider all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, marital status, ancestry, disability, genetic information, veteran or military status, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by law.