This role includes a significant equity component. We are an early-stage startup, so we favor equity over cash in our current compensation philosophy. You should too, or an early-stage startup might not be for you. That said, we expect cash compensation to progress quickly as the company matures.

Forward Deployed Engineer

About you:

• deploy AI systems that solve real problems, not demos

• move fast, iterate with customers, ship value

• always learning

• believe in manifesting the future of physical engineering

About us:

We are building an engineering AGI. We founded P-1 AI with the conviction that the greatest impact of artificial intelligence will be on the built world—helping mankind conquer nature and bend it to our will. Our first product is Archie, an AI engineer capable of quantitative and spatial reasoning over physical product domains that performs at the level of an entry-level design engineer. We aim to put an Archie on every engineering team at every industrial company on earth.

Our founding team includes the top minds in model-based engineering, deep learning, and industries that are our customers. We just closed a $23 million seed round led by Radical Ventures that includes a number of other AI and industrial luminaries. We invite you to join our team of the world’s best engineers and AI researchers, building AI’s most impactful use case.

About the Role:

Our Forward Deployed Engineers serve as the technical lead for each customer deployment, making key technical decisions on architecture, data integrations, and user experience for specific customer missions. On a daily basis, you will build end-to-end AI solutions, take them into production, and support our customers solving real-world physical engineering problems with novel AI capabilities.

You’ll own the technical journey from pre-sales scoping through post-deployment support and expansion, connecting Archie’s reasoning capabilities to customer data, tools, and design processes. You will also make substantial contributions to the Archie core product, with early customer adaptations and configurations reused across deployments. This is a high-impact, high-visibility opportunity with potential to scale into a leadership role.

Responsibilities:

• Work with customers over the entire Archie product lifecycle: Lead discovery sessions, translate engineering challenges into AI use cases, design how Archie integrates into each workflow, and provide post-deployment support to ensure customer success.

• Designing, implement, and refine customer integrations: connect Archie to engineering data sources and tools, iterate until it delivers measurable value.

• Fine-tune and evaluate AI systems in production environments: identify, collect, and prepare customer data to fine-tune models. Source evaluation criteria and questions from customer sessions to validate improved engineering capability.

• Collaborate with engineering teams: work closely with subject matter experts and AI specialists to develop novel AI systems capable of executing critical customer engineering tasks.

• Diagnose and resolve critical issues in live deployments: drive root-cause analysis and implement durable improvements across the organization.

What We're Looking For:

You should apply if you:

• Have shipped data-driven or AI systems to production (Python experience strongly preferred)

• Can rapidly build integrations between disparate customer systems

• Are comfortable working directly with customers and technical leaders

• Have integrated or extended AI systems. Bonus points for engineering or scientific domains!

You'll stand out if you have:

• A physical engineering background (physics, aerospace, electrical, mechanical, etc.)

• Experience with containerized AI services in production

• Worked within compliance/regulatory frameworks for safety-critical hardware

• Delivered solutions in secure enterprise environments

• Handled live production troubleshooting and customer incident response

Interview Process:

1. Initial screening: Head of Talent (30 min)

2. Technical manager interview: Head of Customer Engineering (45 min)

3. AI system design session: customize an AI system to customer needs (60 min)

4. Culture fit & mission: with co-founder & CEO (30 min)

Compensation Range: $165K - $225K