Forward Deployed Engineer

Job description

ABOUT KOGNITOS Kognitos is the deterministic agentic AI platform for the enterprise. Our patented neurosymbolic architecture lets organizations automate finance, procurement, supply chain, and IT workflows in plain English: business rules are the executable code, every step runs exactly as written, and every action is logged and auditable. Zero hallucinations, full governance, production-ready in days. Kognitos is backed by Khosla Ventures, Prosperity7, and Wipro Ventures, recognized by Gartner and ISG, and trusted by Fortune 500 operators including PepsiCo and Wipro. THE ROLE Every enterprise wants AI in its core operations. Almost none can trust it there. Finance, procurement, and supply chain run on processes where a hallucinated number or a skipped step is not a quirk, it is an audit finding. That trust gap is why most enterprise AI never leaves the pilot stage, and closing it is the problem Kognitos exists to solve. A platform alone does not close the gap. People do. As a Forward Deployed Engineer, you take Kognitos into the customer's reality: environments with fragmented data, undocumented business rules, compliance obligations, and workflow complexity no outsider understands. You embed with the customer, understand how the business actually works, reengineer the process, and bring it live in production. This is where enterprise AI stops being a promise and starts being an outcome. You own the account from the first discovery call through go-live, adoption, renewal, and growth. You are not a consultant who advises and hands off; you build the solution, drive it to outcome, stay accountable for the value it creates, and carry what you learn back into the product. The best FDEs operate across four dimensions: technical, functional, project management, and relationship. Few roles ask for all four, and fewer still let you build all four at once. This one does. WHAT YOU'LL DO - Own enterprise accounts end to end: discovery, design, build, go-live, adoption, renewals, and expansion. You are accountable for the health metrics of your accounts, NPS, adoption, time-to-value, and retention, not just project completion. - Run process discovery and reengineering workshops with customers: map how the business actually works, diagnose the real bottleneck behind the stated request, and redesign processes rather than paving over them with automation. - Design and build production automations on the Kognitos platform across finance, manufacturing, and logistics processes, integrating with ERPs and enterprise systems in environments where AI governance is still being defined. - Act as the customer's trusted advisor: lead value-based discussions with stakeholders from process owners to the C-suite, set expectations honestly, and anchor every conversation in business outcomes. - Drive customer success, evangelism, and growth: build champions inside the account, surface expansion opportunities, and own the commercial health of your accounts alongside the technical delivery. - Manage multiple concurrent engagements, sequencing work to deadlines, holding the line against scope creep, and coordinating across two organizations. - Feed field learnings back to Product and Engineering; you are our eyes and ears in the customer's reality. WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR We hire for demonstrated ability, not credentials. No certification, degree, or year count substitutes for showing us a problem you owned from first conversation to production. If you can walk us through something you have built, a process you redesigned, and an outcome you were personally on the hook for, that carries the interview. WHAT ACTUALLY MATTERS - Critical thinking and systems design: you can take a messy, ambiguous business problem and devise a system that solves it, not just execute a spec someone hands you. - You think fast on your feet and run multiple threads at once: different accounts, different domains, different stages, without letting anything drop. - You understand business context and pain deeply, and you translate it into a working technical solution. This translation is the core skill of the role. - Strong working knowledge of how modern AI systems operate: LLMs, agents, prompt design, their failure modes, and where human-in-the-loop belongs. And daily, hands-on use of AI tools in your own work; not awareness, actual habit. - Domain knowledge in Finance & Accounting: AP/AR, invoicing, reconciliation, reporting, and close processes. Exposure to manufacturing or logistics operations is a plus. - Customer leadership: running discovery and reengineering workshops, driving adoption and evangelism, leading value-based discussions, and operating as the trusted advisor who owns the account through renewals and growth. - Ownership mentality and comfort with ambiguity. When something is broken or stuck, your instinct is to step in. Vague problems energize you rather than paralyze you. - Excellent written and verbal communication; half this job is translating between the technical and business worlds. HELPFUL, NOT MANDATORY Everything below strengthens your case but nothing here is a gate. We would rather hire someone who has shipped one real system end to end than someone with every logo on this list. - Automation and RPA platforms: UiPath, Blue Prism, Automation Anywhere, Workato, or similar. - Enterprise systems: ERP platforms such as SAP, Oracle, NetSuite; experience integrating against enterprise APIs and identity systems. - Python or scripting, and familiarity with data platforms such as Snowflake or Databricks. - Prior experience in Professional Services, Consulting, Solutions Engineering, or Customer Success at enterprise software or AI companies. WHAT SETS GREAT CANDIDATES APART - You have built something real with AI, automations, agents, or applications, and can walk us through it. - You have a point of view on where AI and automation are going and how they change enterprise software. - You have grown accounts, not just delivered projects: renewals, expansions, and referenceable champions. - You have worked at the intersection of technology and business transformation and are energized by both sides. WHY KOGNITOS - Stand where the value is created. The model wars get the headlines; the deployment layer gets the value. You will work exactly where enterprise AI succeeds or fails, on production systems for Fortune 500 customers, not demos. - Proven platform, serious customers. Kognitos is backed by Khosla Ventures and trusted by Fortune 500 companies across finance, manufacturing, and logistics. You inherit real accounts with real stakes from day one. - A team that measures itself honestly. Customer outcome metrics, NPS, adoption, time-to-value, are how we run delivery, and FDEs own them for their accounts. High standards, and the playbooks to meet them. - Four-dimensional growth. Few roles let you build technical, domain, project, and executive-relationship muscle at once. FDEs here develop a range most career tracks force you to ignore, and the ceiling is leadership, not senior IC. - Ownership that compounds. You are the face of the account. Your wins are visible to customers, leadership, and the market, and your feedback shapes the product roadmap directly. - The basics, done right. Competitive compensation, equity, and benefits. FINAL NOTE You do not need to match all of the listed expectations to apply for this position. We are committed to building a team with a variety of backgrounds, experiences, and skills. EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES PROVIDER Kognitos is committed to fostering a diverse work environment and proud to be an equal opportunity employer. As we highly value diversity in our current and future employees, we do not discriminate (including in our hiring and promotion practices) on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, gender expression, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, disability status or any other characteristic protected by law.