Forward Deployed Engineer

70-80% of US federal government work is now done by contractors, not employees. I'm working with an AI company built to break that model. Founders who've built and sold a govtech company before. A substantial raise earlier this year, barely touched, long runway, closing out a strong fiscal year - this is a \"hiring to scale\" moment, not a \"hope we raise again\" one. They're building Forward Deployed Engineers into the core of the company. Small team. You'd report into someone who ran a major FDE org, and you're shaping how the function works from here. Sit with government stakeholders, build what they actually need, ship it, and feed what you learn straight back into the product. Here's what gets people through the process: Not pedigree. Proof of capability. Something you built and shipped end to end - architecture, data, infra, all of it. Side-project energy, self-taught builders, people who've decomposed a hard problem and actually solved it. You also need to hold a room - it's how you think and how you present, not just what you know.