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Forward Deployed Engineer
Full-time · Birmingham, AL
$180k–$220k/yr · Healthcare
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We’re looking for a Forward Deployed Engineer to sit with customers and build. Training is how Caravan starts a relationship; this role is how we go deeper: embedding with clients to design and ship the AI agents, workflows, and automations that change how their organizations work. You’ll be in the customer’s environment, turning “we should automate this” into working systems they can trust. When you’re not on a client engagement, you’ll be our first real engineer on Caravan’s own agent operations: building the platform so the rest of the team can contribute meaningfully, and being the person who genuinely understands what’s happening under the hood.
What you'll do
- Embed with clients to scope, design, and build AI agents and workflows that solve real problems in their environment.
- Ship working systems, not slideware: own delivery end-to-end and make the handoff stick.
- Build and harden Caravan’s internal agent platform (skills, workers, the agent pipeline) when off client work.
- Act as internal product manager for agent operations — turn messy needs into a roadmap the team can build against.
- Lower the floor so non-engineers on the team can contribute to the system meaningfully.
- Stay genuinely current on what’s possible and bring it back to both clients and the platform.
Who you are
- A builder who ships: You take ambiguous problems from idea to working system and you’d rather demo than describe. You’re comfortable owning delivery in someone else’s environment.
- AI-obsessed: You’re already building with tools like Claude Code, agents, and MCP, and you have a point of view about what’s good. You can’t fake the enthusiasm.
- Customer-facing & calm: You can sit with a client, earn trust fast, troubleshoot live, and translate between business goals and technical reality without losing regular people.
- Product-minded: You think about leverage, sequencing, and what’s worth building — not just how to build it. You can wear the PM hat internally.
- Direct & candid: You communicate clearly, give and receive feedback well, and are comfortable with healthy, productive conflict.
- Low-ego teammate: You’ll architect the platform one hour and unblock a teammate’s first skill the next. You build so others can build.
Qualifications
There’s no single “right” background, but you might have:
- Hands-on experience building and shipping software in production, ideally including AI/agentic systems.
- Experience working directly with customers or internal stakeholders.
- Fluency with modern AI developer tooling (LLM APIs, agent frameworks, MCP, automation) and a real builder’s track record with it.
- Comfort in ambiguous, fast-changing environments where you define the work as much as do it.
What you'll get
- Direct exposure to, and mentorship from, experienced founders and operators.
- A front-row seat to how AI is changing work, plus daily practice building an AI-first org.
- Significant scope and the chance to shape both the role and our agent platform as we grow.
If you're not sure you meet all the criteria but this sounds like your kind of job, you should strongly consider applying.
Ready to apply?
The application is a few short questions — about five minutes. We read every one.