Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE)

Summary

Elevate is an AI operating system for acquisitions, seeking high autonomy, analytical Forward Deployed Engineers to build AI systems for private equity-backed roll-ups. The role involves translating real-world complexity into scalable software, owning customer deployments end-to-end while collaborating with the software engineering team.

Responsibilities

• Own customer deployments end-to-end — scoping, business logic translation, data ingestion, pipeline delivery, and ongoing optimization — working directly with mid-market to large-cap operators
• Build and extend our agentic AI platform, in direct collaboration with our software engineering team
• Support go-to-market by joining sales calls and identifying customer expansion opportunities

Skills

• 2+ years experience in consulting or finance, with a desire to grow your technical chops, or data engineering and analytics, with a desire to be directly customer-facing
• Strong analytical fluency working with messy data in SQL and/or Excel
• Excellent communication and business sense - you're comfortable talking to CFOs and operators, not just engineers
• Scrappy, autonomous, and action-oriented
• Hungry to build
• Have hands-on experience building with AI tools and LLM APIs, even for personal use
• SQL and Python proficiency or a strong desire to get there quickly
• You've built internal data platforms, migration pipelines, or agentic workflows
• Experience in or exposure to private equity, roll-ups, or M&A

Qualifications

Must Haves

• 2+ years experience in consulting or finance, with a desire to grow your technical chops, or data engineering and analytics, with a desire to be directly customer-facing
• Strong analytical fluency working with messy data in SQL and/or Excel
• Excellent communication and business sense - you're comfortable talking to CFOs and operators, not just engineers
• Scrappy, autonomous, and action-oriented
• Hungry to build

Nice to Haves

• Have hands-on experience building with AI tools and LLM APIs, even for personal use
• SQL and Python proficiency or a strong desire to get there quickly
• You've built internal data platforms, migration pipelines, or agentic workflows
• Experience in or exposure to private equity, roll-ups, or M&A

Benefits

• Competitive cash compensation
• Meaningful equity in an early-stage, high-growth company