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Founding Forward Deployed Engineering Lead

Job type: Full Time · Department: Engineering (R&D) · Work type: On-Site

San Francisco, California, United States

About Fulcrum

The $1.5 trillion insurance industry is powered by brokers. Every business needs insurance, and the brokerage industry is hamstrung by account management capacity. Account managers are constantly pulled in multiple directions—keying information into systems, chasing documents, doing mundane work—rather than focusing on the client interactions that actually matter. Most brokerages either outsource this work or grind through it manually.

We're building an AI platform to automate this insurance drudgery. Our platform already saves customers thousands of hours and millions of dollars every year. Our customers love the product— we have deep penetration within enterprise brokerages and genuinely enjoy making our customers' lives better. We just raised our Series A and are just getting started.

Why Fulcrum

  • Rocket-ship growth. We’ve achieved multiple seven figures in ARR in just over a year, serving large enterprise clients including 30% of the top 50 brokers in the country.

  • Extreme ownership. You’ll work directly with enterprise users and ship end-to-end products that save them hours every week.

  • Bleeding-edge problems, real impact. Tackle tough AI and product challenges whose wins show up immediately in customer workflows.

  • In-person collaboration. Join a lean, staff-level team (ex-Affirm, Uber, DoorDash, McKinsey) working side-by-side in San Francisco; we believe the best ideas are fostered in an in-person environment.

  • Top-of-market rewards. Competitive base salary plus meaningful founding-team equity.

About the Role

This is a founding, hands-on leadership role at the intersection of engineering, customer success, and product. You'll work directly with some of the largest brokerages in the world—partnering closely with our teams to implement Fulcrum's software and drive customer outcomes.

In the early days, you'll be deeply technical: working directly with customers, writing code, and solving complex implementation challenges yourself. As we scale, you'll build and lead the entire FDE function from the ground up—hiring engineers, establishing processes, and setting the standard for how forward deployed work gets done at Fulcrum.

You'll be trusted to operate with minimal guidance, influence customer direction, and raise the bar across both technical execution and customer experience. This role is ideal for experienced engineers who exercise strong technical judgment, customer intuition, and product thinking—and who are excited to build a team around them.

What You Will Do

  • Partner directly with customers—from end users to executives—to deeply understand their business processes, pain points, and success criteria

  • Lead technical implementations hands-on, writing code and solving customer problems directly

  • Collaborate with Customer Success to drive customer outcomes and ensure successful implementations

  • Build and scale the FDE function, recruiting and leading a team of forward deployed engineers

  • Identify opportunities where customer solutions can inform or extend Fulcrum's native platform capabilities

  • Work closely with Product and Engineering teams to align customer needs with platform development

About You

  • BS or MS in Computer Science or a related field

  • 4+ years of engineering experience

  • Strong proficiency in at least one of TypeScript, JavaScript, Python, or Go, with experience in SQL and data modeling

  • Proven ability to lead ambiguous projects independently and deliver high-quality outcomes

  • Excellent communication skills and comfort working directly with senior customer stakeholders

  • Strong project ownership and execution skills

  • Experience leading a team

  • Willingness to travel to customer sites as needed (~25%)

Bonus Qualifications

  • Have experience with AI platforms and technologies, including generative models and LLMs

  • Previous experience working in an early-stage startup or dynamic environment

Our Team and Philosophy

  • Builders at heart. You love writing code and care deeply about doing it well—but what really drives you is building products that have real impact.

  • Bias toward action. You have an internal sense of urgency. You'd much rather get something done today than tomorrow.

  • Experimenters. You love playing around with the latest technology and are always eager to experiment with the latest and greatest.

  • Ambitious about the opportunity. You're excited about building the defining AI company in the insurance industry.

What we offer

  • Competitive salary + meaningful equity.

  • Full health, dental & vision.

  • High-ownership, high-trust culture with lightning-fast executors.

  • Regular team off-sites, dinners, and an office stocked for builders.

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