Forward Deployed Software Engineer (AI Agents)

About the Opportunity

Most engineering roles ask you to build in a controlled environment. This one puts you in the field. We're hiring one of our founding team of Agent Delivery Software Engineers to embed directly with customers and deploy production AI agents inside some of the world's largest logistics companies. You will sit alongside customer engineers and operations teams, reverse engineer legacy systems, design pragmatic integrations, and ship AI workflows into messy, real-world environments.

This is not a research or pure backend role. This is a hands-on deployment role focused on getting systems live, keeping them reliable, and owning real-world outcomes.

How You Will Make an Impact

• Reverse engineer undocumented APIs, ERPs, TMS systems, and internal tools with minimal guidance
• Debug broken data pipelines, mismatched schemas, and flaky integrations in production environments
• Sit onsite with customer teams to diagnose failures and ship fixes in real time (roughly 25% travel)
• Make pragmatic tradeoffs to get systems live under tight timelines
• Own customer go-lives end-to-end, from scoping to production stability
• Build with observability in mind so issues surface quickly and stay fixed

Preferred Experience

• 2 to 4+ years of experience shipping and owning production systems, ideally in a high-growth or early-stage environment
• Strong experience integrating with third-party APIs, authentication systems, and event-driven workflows
• Comfortable debugging distributed systems in production under real customer constraints
• Thrives in ambiguous environments where requirements evolve and documentation is sparse
• Some experience working directly with customers or external stakeholders is a plus
• Genuinely enjoys messy real-world systems more than clean internal abstractions
• Excited to work in person 5 days a week and comfortable with roughly 25% travel to customer sites
• Not the right fit for those primarily interested in ML research, deeply scoped platform work, or remote-first environments

How we work

• Impact from day one: your first week might involve wiring a new integration into production or debugging a workflow that saves a customer hours
• One standup at 10 am PST. The rest is building
• Small PRs, fast iteration, and a team that sits side by side so questions get answered in minutes
• Catered lunch daily, Thursday boba runs, and AI tools actively encouraged (Claude, Cursor) as long as you understand the architecture underneath
• We promote from within: several teammates earned promotions in under a year

Our Tech Stack

• Backend: Node.js + TypeScript on Encore.dev, event-driven design with message passing and queues, hosted on GCP
• Database: PostgreSQL
• LLMs: OpenAI, Anthropic, Google (foundation models), fine-tuned models on Vertex AI
• Browser Automation: Playwright
• Frontend: Next.js + React + TypeScript, hosted on Vercel
• Observability: Datadog

Interview Process

• Intro Chat with Recruiting - (30 mins)
• Technical Screen + Meet and Greet with an Engineer (60 mins)
• Executive Chat with Bizops Lead or CTO (30-45 mins)
• Final Interview: deep-dive technical and behavioral interviews (~4 hours)

Location

• San Francisco: Since we're a small team building 0-1 products, we prefer candidates to be comfortable working in an in-office environment in San Francisco. We typically come into the office 5 days a week. Relocation assistance can be provided for interested candidates.
• New York: Satellite Office with ~8 Pallet employees across engineering, operations, and success - we are seeking to hire and grow out the team more here. The team typically comes into the office 4-5 days a week. Relocation assistance is not provided for our New York office.
• Travel: ~25% travel to customer locations

Compensation

The estimated salary range for this role is $130,000–$200,000, depending on experience and skill set. In addition to base salary, we offer competitive equity, benefits, and growth opportunities. Final compensation will be determined based on a combination of factors, including experience, qualifications, and location.

Top-Tier Benefits

🩺 Health, Vision, and Dental benefits 

🏝️ Flexible PTO

➕ Life Insurance and Accidental Insurance 

❤️‍🩹 Short-Term Disability Coverage

💸 Generous salary and equity for all staff

🪜 401k option; helping you save for the future

📚 Yearly learning and development stipend

🚌 Commuter benefits 

🚘 Uber ride stipend if you ever have to work late in the office 

🏡 Office home stipend to get you comfy in your space

🍔 Daily catered lunches provided by Sharebite (every meal you order, one meal gets donated)

🥤 Monthly happy hours

🎉 Annual Company Offsites; this year we'll be headed to Palm Springs 🌴 

Pallet is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity and Affirmative Action employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.