Founding Forward Deployed Engineer
About Us
We’re Helios—a venture-backed AI startup building Proxi, the first AI-native platform purpose-built for public-private sector engagement. From Fortune 500 policy teams to high-impact lobbying firms, we’re redefining how organizations interact with the government. Our founding team includes alumni from the White House, State Department, Microsoft, and Datadog. We’re backed by top institutional investors and are closing deals before most startups even launch.
The Role
We’re hiring a Forward Deployed Engineer to serve as the connective tissue between our technical stack and our highest-stakes customers. You’ll act as a founding member of our delivery function—equal parts enterprise engineer, product strategist, and GTM operator. You’ll help us win and retain high-value contracts by deeply understanding customer pain, shaping solutions in real time, and translating those needs directly to the engineering team. You must be comfortable sitting across the table from C-suite buyers and state or federal decision-makers—and then jumping into a Figma file, Linear board, or codebase to ensure execution.
This role is ideal for someone who thrives at the intersection of enterprise AI, government relationships, and rapid product iteration.
Location: New York City or Washington, D.C.
Key Responsibilities
Partner with sales, founders, and policy leaders to drive customer discovery and close six-to-seven figure single-source government contracts
Rapidly deploy and configure early-stage product implementations for strategic customers
Translate real-world regulatory and government affairs workflows into scalable technical requirements
Act as the internal voice of high-value customers in product and engineering meetings
Manage the technical execution of forward-deployed PoCs and paid pilots, often with highly bespoke needs
Hunt for signals of product-market fit through customer interactions, usage analytics, and structured feedback
Lead on integration, data onboarding, and configuration of secure, compliance-sensitive deployments
Shape our roadmap by working hands-on with Proxi’s voice agent, semantic search stack, and LLM pipeline
You Might Be a Fit If You
Have 5+ years of experience in technical roles spanning engineering, solutions architecture, or enterprise AI
Have previously worked with or sold into U.S. government agencies at the state, federal, city, or county level
Know how to navigate RFPs, single-source contract pathways, and public-sector procurement cycles
Can speak fluently with both policy professionals and ML engineers—and act as a trusted partner to both
Thrive in fast-paced, high-stakes environments where velocity is survival
Have experience deploying AI/ML systems in production (LLM experience preferred)
Understand security, compliance, and data privacy requirements in regulated industries
Have a builder mindset: you're not afraid to hack together solutions, iterate with users, and solve for scale later
Nice to Have
Familiarity with govtech, regulatory platforms, or public-sector SaaS
Prior experience winning or executing on state/federal software contracts
Network within lobbying, government affairs, or regulatory communities
Background in sales engineering or customer success for technical products
Why Helios?
We’re building a category-defining company—and we’re doing it fast. This role is a rare opportunity to shape both product and policy in one of the most consequential spaces in tech. If you’re tired of watching others ship from the sidelines and are ready to push the boundary between AI, engineering, and government, we want to talk.