Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE)
Drivepoint is hiring a Forward Deployed Engineer to lead AI deployments for consumer brands: solving messy data problems, connecting sources like Shopify, Amazon, retailers and 3PLs, and building automated AI workflows with Claude Code and SQL. Hybrid role based in New York City, reporting to the Head of Product.
- Compensation
- $140K–$175K / yr
- Location
- New York, NY
- Work setup
- Not specified
- Seniority
- Not specified
- Employment
- Not specified
- Experience
- Not specified
- Category
- Solutions engineering
- Posted
Skills
Must have
- Understand how a whole consumer brand works: channel economics, retail vs. DTC, trade spend, weeks of supply, CAC and retention, landed cost
- Think like a product person: start from the user's problem and outcome
- Consultative: set agendas, ask clarifying questions, turn messy conversations into crisp scope
- Build with AI: use Claude Code or similar to build workflows, skills or agents that others use
- Technical: understand how data moves from Shopify to a warehouse to a report, can read SQL, can reconcile mismatched numbers
- Great with customers: comfortable leading sessions with founders and execs; clear, warm, direct writing
- Keep many things moving: manage several brands and partners at once
- Financially literate: read a P&L and spot a forecast that doesn't make sense
Nice to have
- Founded, launched or run a consumer brand
- Consulting, agency or implementation background
- SQL or BigQuery
- Hands-on with Shopify, Amazon, retailer, 3PL or ad platform data
- Built an internal tool or app for a team
Full description
Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE)
We're hiring a Forward Deployed Engineer to lead AI deployments at consumer brands and solve the data and business problems they've never been able to crack. You think like a product person, you've built something from zero, and you build with AI every day.
The role
Every company is trying to deploy AI, and most consumer brands stall on the hard part: messy data and business problems nobody has cracked. As an FDE, you walk into a brand as the lead for its AI deployment and solve a problem it has never been able to solve.
You own a set of brands from kickoff until their team runs real work in Drivepoint without us. Depending on the customer, you may stay on as their partner through the year: new problems, new workflows, renewal and expansion. You report to our Head of Product and work hybrid in New York City.
What you'll do
- Solve the hard data problems. Shopify orders that don't tie to the books, a channel counted twice, retailer data that arrives as five different files, SKUs named three ways. You find out why, fix it, and make the numbers trusted.
- Crack business problems they've never answered. Which retailer actually makes money after trade spend? Can we call this month's wholesale close from open POs before it hits the books? Where is cash stuck in inventory? You frame the question, find the data that answers it, and get the answer into their hands.
- Lead the engagement. Open every session with an agenda and what the customer will walk away with. Ask what decision they're trying to make before anything gets built. Close with owners and dates, and drive the plan until it runs without you.
- Set up the foundation. Connect Shopify, Amazon, TikTok Shop, retailers, 3PLs, ad platforms and the books with customers and their agencies. Capture their account mappings, SKU conventions and naming so every answer comes back in their language.
- Put AI to work. Tailor workflows from our library to the brand and schedule them to run on their own, in our app, in Claude or ChatGPT, or in the tools they build, with the right permissions.
- Steer implementation partners. Brief partners on custom builds, keep them on schedule, and check their work before the customer sees it.
- Turn field work into product. When a problem repeats across brands, build the fix into a reusable workflow with Claude Code and bring the evidence to the product team.
What this role is (and isn't)
This isn't a traditional software engineering role, and it isn't a sales role. You build every day, mostly with AI: Claude Code, skills and automated workflows, SQL against a brand's data, and light scripting when it's the fastest way through. The hard part is knowing what to build and why. If your best work is backend systems, ML infrastructure or model training, this isn't the role.