Founding Forward Deployed Research Engineer (FDRE - Clearance)
ABOUT POOLSIDE
In this decade, the world will create Artificial General Intelligence. There will only be a small number of companies who will achieve this. Their ability to stack advantages and pull ahead will define the winners. These companies will move faster than anyone else. They will attract the world's most capable talent. They will be on the forefront of applied research, engineering, infrastructure and deployment at scale. They will continue to scale their training to larger & more capable models. They will be given the right to raise large amounts of capital along their journey to enable this. They will create powerful economic engines. They will obsess over the success of their users and customers.
Poolside exists to be this company: to build a world where AI will be the engine behind economically valuable work and scientific progress. We believe the fastest way to reach AGI lies in accelerating software development itself, by reshaping the developer experience with agentic systems, coding assistants, and the frontier models that power them. We deploy these systems directly into the development environments of security-conscious enterprises.
ABOUT OUR TEAM
You’ll join a tight-knit group of engineers and researchers from leading labs and product companies (DeepMind, Palantir, GitHub, among others). The culture is low-ego and high-bar, organized around hard problems. It’s a place to learn by building - side-by-side with people who care about craft, rigor, and impact - on challenges that matter and aren’t found anywhere else. Very few companies get a seat at this table, and all the ingredients are in place to give us the right to win. Now we just need to execute.
ABOUT THE ROLE
As an FDRE, you'll be embedded with customers, figuring out how to build real agentic systems to solve hard problems.
Hard problems aren’t solved from an armchair; the right to solve them comes from experience, resilience, and a little scar tissue, earned by engaging with reality.
This role gives you direct exposure to frontier AI R&D and a front-row seat to the most valuable problems and industries on the planet. You’ll operate at the intersection of software engineering, applied AI and agent research, and product - designing and deploying high-reliability systems, while feeding signal back into our products and models. This role requires US clearance.
RESPONSIBILITIES
FDREs work in small teams with the agility and autonomy of a startup, but with the experience and support of an established organization. Among other things, you will
Own the mission end-to-end. Be the technical owner in the field, clarify goals, shape the plan, make the hard calls, and ship systems that move real metrics.
Partner for impact. Work directly with operators and executives to scope what matters most, then turn it into production results.
Build with research in the loop. Collaborate with AI R&D on prompts, tools, and model improvements; bring back field-signals that make the next model, and the platform, better.
Turn wins into a flywheel. Convert patterns into playbooks, products, and libraries so that every deployment is faster, more powerful, and more reliable than the last.
WHAT YOU'LL SEE IN THE FIELD
These are the kinds of skills and technologies you’ll likely use and develop over time. Strong experience in any is a plus, not a prerequisite. We look for spikes!
Software engineering & platforms: Backend services at scale; distributed systems; data/feature pipelines; queues/caching; fault tolerance.
Agentic/LLM systems: multi-agent systems; agent communication/delegation; evals; long-running, fault-tolerant agents; tools/prompt/program design; guardrails.
Evaluation & experimentation: Designing evals; monitoring performance/drift; fundamentals of Data Science/ML; able to turn a hazy problem into a structured exploration.
Cloud & ops: Kubernetes, Docker, IaC (Terraform/CDK), networking, secrets, observability (Grafana/Prometheus/Datadog), CI/CD.
Model ops: Fine-tuning/RL; designing agent environments; managing inference.
Enterprise delivery: Security/compliance, data governance, integration with legacy systems.
SKILLS & EXPERIENCE
Exceptional, high-agency, low-ego. You bias to action, collaborate well, and are motivated by impact and outcome.
Learning-driven. You pick up new domains quickly, ask sharp questions, and turn are comfortable with ambiguity.
Product-minded. You translate field pain into clean abstractions, docs, and tools others can use.
Excellent communicator. You express ideas clearly, listen actively, and build east rapport with customers and teammates alike.
Adventurer. You are eager and willing to travel and experience new things, and meet unforeseen challenges with creativity and resourcefulness.
If you’re unsure whether you check every box, you should still apply! Impact beats pedigree here.
PROCESS
Intro call with a member of the Forward Deployed team
Technical Interview with a Member of Engineering
Interview with (another) member of the Forward Deployed team
People Interview with Beatriz, Head of People
BENEFITS
Fully remote work & flexible hours
37 days/year of vacation & holidays
Health insurance allowance for you & dependents
Company-provided equipment
Well-being, always-be-learning & home office allowances
Frequent team get togethers
Diverse & inclusive people-first culture