Priority roleEngineeringFull-time

Forward Deployed Engineer

Work directly with high-intent customers to get production AI workloads running on Direct Inference, then bring the sharp edges back into the product and serving engine.

This is one of the main roles we are hiring for. You will sit at the point where production customers, product taste, and infrastructure reality meet.

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About Direct Inference

Direct Inference is the endpoint that does everything frontier models can do. Customers bring the SDK and model id they already use; Direct Inference handles capability, quality, cost, latency, failover, and provider churn behind the scenes.

The important product constraint is zero-knowledge: customers never see which model, provider, or version served a request. That lets them build on a stable surface while the model market keeps moving underneath it.

What you'll own

Lead technical pilots and production launches for customers moving OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, agent, document, code, and reasoning workloads onto Direct Inference.
Build small, high-leverage tools, examples, SDK snippets, dashboards, and workflow adapters that unblock real deployments.
Debug customer issues across request shape, auth, billing, observability, cost controls, latency, and serving behavior.
Turn repeated field patterns into product requirements, docs, runbooks, and engineering fixes.
Partner with inference, reliability, and product engineering to close gaps exposed by high-value customer traffic.
Protect the zero-knowledge contract while making the customer experience feel simple, trustworthy, and fast.

Projects you might ship

Build a migration kit that turns an existing OpenAI, Anthropic, or Gemini integration into a Direct Inference deployment path customers can follow in an afternoon.
Create a diagnostic workflow that explains why a customer request was classified as code, document, vision, JSON, reasoning, flash, or pro without exposing the serving model.
Stand up the first version of a high-touch launch playbook for production customers: technical checklist, observability review, spend-cap setup, and launch-day monitoring.

What we're looking for

You have shipped production software with customers or users close enough to feel the consequences.
You can move across frontend, backend, APIs, SDKs, logs, and cloud infrastructure without getting precious about the boundary.
You write clearly: docs, customer notes, bug reports, product requirements, and concise technical explanations.
You are comfortable in ambiguity and can turn a messy customer integration into a small set of concrete fixes.
You care about taste and reliability in equal measure: the demo should feel good, and the system underneath should hold.

Nice to have

Experience as a founding engineer, solutions engineer, sales engineer, developer advocate, or customer-facing infrastructure engineer.
Hands-on history with LLM APIs, agent frameworks, SDK migrations, observability tools, or production AI launches.
A habit of turning one-off customer work into reusable product, documentation, or automation.

Your first 90 days

Own a customer pilot from first technical call through a production-ready integration.
Ship at least one reusable artifact that shortens future deployments: an example app, doc path, diagnostic tool, or product improvement.
Build a clear feedback loop with engineering so field discoveries become roadmap signal instead of private context.

Benefits & support

Built for people doing serious work in a small team.

Competitive salary and meaningful equity

Remote-first work with San Francisco collaboration space

Medical, dental, and vision coverage

Home-office and developer-tooling budget

Quarterly team working sessions and offsites

Direct access to customers and production product decisions

Interview process

A direct loop with the people doing the work.

Intro

A focused conversation about your background, what you want to build, and where this role should create leverage.

Technical

A practical working session around the kind of problem this role owns. We prefer realistic systems over puzzle interviews.

Team

Meet the people you would work with across product, engineering, reliability, and customer-facing work.

Offer

We align on scope, compensation, start timing, and the first problems you would take on.

Application

Apply for Forward Deployed Engineer.

Share the practical context we should know before the first conversation. We read applications for ownership, clarity, and evidence of shipped work.

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Candidate notices

Equal opportunity

Direct Inference is an equal-opportunity employer. Qualified applicants are considered without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, veteran status, age, or any other status protected by law.

Reasonable accommodations

If you need an accommodation during the interview process, contact careers@directinference.com. We will work with you on a reasonable path through the process.

Candidate privacy

Application information is used for recruiting, evaluation, coordination, and hiring operations. Access is limited to people involved in the hiring process and retained only as needed for legitimate recruiting and compliance purposes.

Compensation

Posted ranges are good-faith estimates for the role and may vary by experience, location, scope, and market conditions. Equity and benefits are considered as part of the total offer.

Work authorization

Candidates are asked about current and future work authorization so we can understand employment feasibility early. A sponsorship need does not automatically disqualify a candidate.

Recruiting safety

Direct Inference will not ask candidates to purchase equipment, send money, or share sensitive personal information before a formal process. Messages should come from a directinference.com address.

More openings

Other ways to build Direct Inference.

All roles

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Own and extend the serving engine: the quality, latency, health, and price signals that decide how every request is served.

Platform Reliability Engineer (SRE)

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Full Stack Engineer

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Build the product and platform surfaces that make Direct Inference feel like one dependable endpoint, from API workflows to dashboard tools used by production teams.