Founding Forward Deployed Engineering Lead

Founding leadership role sitting at the intersection of engineering, customer success, and product at an AI automation company for the insurance brokerage industry. Fulcrum automates manual account-manager work like proposal creation, policy checking, document chasing, and data entry in the $1.5T insurance industry where every transaction flows through brokers.

The trajectory is hands-on IC first, then build and lead the entire forward-deployed engineering function.

Phase 1 — Hands-on IC:

• Work directly with customers (end users through executives) to understand business processes, pain points, and success criteria
• Lead technical implementations hands-on — writing code, solving complex customer problems directly
• Partner with Customer Success to drive customer outcomes

Phase 2 — Build and lead the FDE function:

• Recruit, hire, and lead a team of 3–5 forward-deployed engineers
• Establish processes and set the bar for FDE work at Fulcrum
• Identify where customer-specific solutions can extend Fulcrum's core platform
• Work closely with Product and Engineering on roadmap alignment

• Work directly with customers (end users through executives) to understand business processes, pain points, and success criteria
• Lead technical implementations hands-on — writing code, solving complex customer problems directly
• Partner with Customer Success to drive customer outcomes
• Recruit, hire, and lead a team of 3–5 forward-deployed engineers
• Establish processes and set the bar for FDE work at Fulcrum
• Identify where customer-specific solutions can extend Fulcrum's core platform
• Work closely with Product and Engineering on roadmap alignment
• Travel up to ~25% to customer sites

Must-have:

• 4–8 years of engineering experience in a forward-deployed, implementation, or solutions engineering role
• Tech lead or management experience (managed at least 2+ engineers, even informally as a TLM)
• Proven IC strength — track record leading ambiguous projects independently
• Strong proficiency in at least one of: TypeScript, JavaScript, Python, or Go
• SQL and data modeling experience
• Excellent communication skills — comfortable with senior customer stakeholders
• BS or MS in Computer Science or related field (top 100 school undergrad ideal)
• Willingness to travel ~25% to customer sites

Strongly preferred:

• Experience at a top-tier, VC-backed tech startup (target companies below)
• Clear transition story from hands-on IC → building/scaling an FDE team
• Experience with AI platforms, LLMs, or generative models
• Early-stage startup experience or dynamic environments

Target companies: C3.ai, Harvey, Rippling, Decagon, Glean, Palantir Technologies

Disqualifiers:

• Tech consulting backgrounds (e.g., TCS, big-corp consulting)
• Heavy legacy/big-corp enterprise experience without startup exposure
• Candidates without strong top-tier company pedigree
• Accomplishments leaning on legacy enterprise rather than early-stage build experience

1. Hiring manager screen
2. Technical screening(s)
3. On-site interview

• Founding leadership — build the FDE function from zero
• Real product traction — Series A, multi-million ARR, serving 30% of the top 50 brokers with <10 people at the time
• High-leverage market — $1.5T insurance industry, broker-mediated, ripe for AI automation
• Strong team — ex-Affirm, Uber, DoorDash, McKinsey
• Top-of-market comp — $300K–$400K base plus competitive founding equity
• Direct founder access — reports into co-founder (Sambhav Anand), trusted to operate with minimal guidance