Forward Deployed Engineer

What You'll Do

• Own the technical path from customer evaluation to committed design win on the Chimera GPNPU.
• Convert 2–3 active customer evaluations into committed design wins by porting customer workloads, architecting adaptations, profiling, and writing custom kernels when required.
• Embed with customer engineering teams on-site and remotely: debug failures, hit benchmark targets, guide model-architecture tradeoffs, and drive evaluations end-to-end.
• Build the agentic FDE toolkit: codify learnings into reusable SDK skills, porting playbooks, agentic content, applications, and benchmark collateral.
• Close the loop internally: partner with engineering and product teams to relay customer learnings, shape the roadmap, and contribute to the agentic FDE toolset.

What Success Looks Like

• Within first 6–12 months: convert 2–3 evaluations into design wins; achieve deep fluency across Chimera stack (quantization, custom kernels, compiler); establish reusable assets that shorten future engagements; become trusted technical partner; help define and refine agentic (Claude Code–based) FDE workflow.

What We're Looking For

Required

• Strong C++ and Python; experience writing performance-critical code for constrained targets (DSP, NPU, GPU, or embedded SoC).
• Systems-level performance intuition (memory bandwidth, data movement, cycle-level reasoning); ability to read profiles and identify bottlenecks.
• High agency, independent problem-solving; methodical and empirical.
• Comfortable operating without a playbook and in ambiguity.

Preferred

• Prior FAE, Sales Engineering, or FDE experience, or startup experience owning end-to-end implementations.
• Familiarity with agentic dev tooling (Claude Code, MCP) or strong enthusiasm to adopt.
• Background at NPU/edge-AI IP/silicon companies (e.g. Qualcomm, NVIDIA TensorRT/Jetson, Ceva, Cadence, Synopsys, Arm, Hailo, Ambarella, SiMa.ai, Axelera, EdgeCortix).
• Experience at inference-focused startups (e.g. Groq, Untether, Tenstorrent) in field/customer engineering or kernel teams.
• Palantir-style FDE experience (embedded or ML-systems backgrounds).
• Experience at technical trading arms optimizing kernels/hardware (e.g. DRW, Hudson River, D.E. Shaw, Citadel).
• Big-firm consulting background with hands-on technical work.

What We Offer

• Competitive salary and equity (range reflects typical compensation based on market rate, qualifications, experience, interview performance, and location).
• Medical, dental, vision insurance (premiums 99% covered for employees).
• Company-paid life insurance; voluntary supplemental life, STD, LTD.
• Commuter support (parking/Caltrain reimbursement).
• FSA + HSA.
• Paid parental leave.
• 401(k) retirement plan.
• Flexible PTO and winter holiday shutdown.
• Catered lunch daily.
• Downtown Burlingame office.