Forward Deployable Engineer
Pleasanton (Bay Area)
Full Time
Deploy production AI systems into real customer environments and help define how modern commerce companies use AI to drive revenue, support quality, and operational scale.
We believe commerce should feel more helpful, more personal, and far less frustrating than it does today. Too many customer journeys still break at the exact moments that matter most, when shoppers are deciding what to buy, when support teams are overloaded, and when brands struggle to deliver a consistent experience across channels.
Alhena is building the AI platform that fixes that. We help modern merchants turn customer experience into a true growth engine through AI-powered shopping, support, and agent-assist systems that guide buyers, resolve issues, and improve outcomes across the full customer journey.
Our ambition is not to bolt AI onto commerce. It is to make AI a core operating layer for how commerce brands engage, support, and grow. That means building systems that are accurate, deeply integrated, fast to deploy, and trusted in production.
We are backed by top Silicon Valley investors including Slow Ventures, 6th Man Ventures, and South Park Commons. Our team includes former leaders from Meta, LinkedIn, Microsoft, and Uber. We are early, mission-driven, intensely product-focused, and moving with urgency.
As a Forward Deployable Engineer, you will work at the intersection of engineering, AI, product, and customer outcomes. You will deploy Alhena into live merchant environments, solve high-priority technical problems, and make sure customers see value quickly.
This is a hands-on role for someone early in their career who wants more than a narrow engineering lane. You will work across integrations, prompts, workflows, analytics, internal tooling, and customer deployments to make our AI systems perform at a very high level in production.
You should be excited by ambiguity, speed, and ownership. If you want steep growth, direct customer exposure, and the chance to ship AI systems that influence revenue and customer experience, this role is built for you.
Deploy Alhena for new customers and help bring them live quickly and successfully
Work directly with customers to understand workflows, pain points, edge cases, and success criteria
Build and configure integrations across e-commerce platforms, help desks, internal tools, and data sources
Improve agent performance through prompt design, workflow iteration, evaluation, testing, and debugging
Write production-quality code for customer requirements, internal deployment tooling, and product improvements
Investigate failures in real-world AI behavior across data pipelines, retrieval, integrations, and model outputs
Partner with engineering, product, and go-to-market teams to turn customer needs into scalable product capabilities
Create repeatable deployment playbooks, implementation patterns, and operational best practices
Move quickly from problem identification to shipped solution in high-impact customer situations
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience
1-2 years of software engineering experience, ideally in startups or fast-moving product environments
Strong coding ability in Python, TypeScript, JavaScript, or similar modern languages
Comfort working with APIs, backend systems, integrations, and debugging production issues
Strong product instinct and willingness to engage directly with customer problems
Interest in LLMs, AI agents, prompt systems, evaluation workflows, and applied AI products
Ability to operate with high ownership and make progress in ambiguous situations
Strong communication skills and the ability to work across technical and non-technical teams
Bias toward action, speed, and practical problem solving
Willingness to work in person in Pleasanton (Bay Area)
Experience with LLM APIs, agent frameworks, retrieval systems, or AI evaluation tooling
Experience with e-commerce, customer support platforms, SaaS workflows, or integrations
Exposure to Shopify, Gorgias, Zendesk, Intercom, or similar merchant tooling
Experience in customer-facing engineering, solutions engineering, implementation, or forward-deployed roles
Familiarity with analytics, experimentation, and measuring product or operational performance
Work on applied AI systems that already create measurable value for real commerce businesses
Ship quickly in a high-ownership environment with direct exposure to customers and decision-makers
Competitive compensation, meaningful equity, and the chance to grow fast alongside an exceptional team
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