> Markdown version of [/jobs/ext/491781-forward-deployed-engineer-stealth-ai-freight-operations-startup](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/jobs/ext/491781-forward-deployed-engineer-stealth-ai-freight-operations-startup). Every page supports `.md` or `Accept: text/markdown`. Links point to the HTML versions so they work for humans too. Agent guide: [/agents.md](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/agents.md). --- # Forward Deployed Engineer - Stealth AI Freight Operations Startup - **Company:** UP LABORATORY INC. - **Location:** Bentonville, AR, United States - **Contract:** Permanent contract - **Skills:** Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), Artificial Intelligence, BigQuery, Data Warehousing, Operational Data Store, Large Language Models, Snowflake, Production Code, Apache Kafka, Data Pipelines - **Published:** June 7, 2026 - **Apply:** https://www.indeed.com/viewjob?jk=2e974bff57dabf78 ## About the Role Do you have experience in Engineering development testing?, * Strong, pragmatic engineering - you write clean, production-quality code and can move comfortably across the full stack. * Systems thinking - you understand how APIs, data, and workflows connect, and you can architect an end-to-end solution from a vague problem statement. * Deep fluency with production AI - you have direct experience architecting, testing, and refining agentic workflows and LLM systems. You bridge the trust gap between an impressive demo and a hardened production solution by mastering prompting, tool-use, evals, and rigorous trace analysis. * Customer obsession - you are energized by sitting with a customer, diagnosing a broken process, and shipping something that fixes it. You explain technical ideas clearly to non-technical stakeholders. * 0-to-1 bias to action - comfortable with ambiguity, missing requirements, and shifting priorities. You make progress without a spec and a safety net. * Ownership and presence - willingness to be on-site in Northwest Arkansas and to travel to customer locations as needed (typically up to ~25%). Nice to Have * Experience in freight, logistics, supply chain, or another operations-heavy enterprise domain. * Familiar with data pipelines and integrating into large enterprise platforms - event streams (Kafka), data warehouses (BigQuery, Snowflake), and TMS via API/EDI. * Prior experience as a forward-deployed engineer, solutions engineer, or founding engineer at an enterprise-software or AI company. * Experience standing up data pipelines and ML or optimization workflows in production. ## Description We are looking for a Forward-Deployed Engineer (FDE) to turn our technology into measurable value on the ground. Embedded alongside dispatchers, brokers, and operations leaders, you will translate their hardest problems into working software and ship it fast. You are one of the first people our customers meet and the person who makes our platform work in their world. Expect to spend time in the field learning how operations really run, then move fast to build integrations, configure agents, validate outputs, enable adoption and stand up production solutions - carrying everything you learn straight back into the core product. This posting is intentionally open on level: we hire for the skill set and bias to action, not a title. Candidates from senior IC through founding-level will be considered, with scope and compensation matched to experience. What You'll Do * Live in the problem - spend real time on-site and embedded with customers to understand their freight workflows, systems, and pain points firsthand. * Build the solution - design and build integrations, data pipelines, and agentic workflows that connect our platform to TMS, ELD, EDI, and the long tail of customer systems. * Ship fast, then harden - deliver early wins that prove value within weeks, then iterate toward scaled, production-grade deployments. * Wrangle the data - ingest, clean, and structure messy operational data so our models and agents can act on it reliably. * Make the AI work in the wild - author, test, and tune prompts and agent logic; monitor production systems and own their reliability, accuracy, and performance. * Cultivate adoption, not just deployment - champion the user experience by bridging the gap between agent performance and real-world results, ensuring stakeholders trust and rely on the platform for day-to-day operations. * Close the loop - carry hard-won lessons from the field back to product and engineering, shaping the roadmap and turning one-off solutions into reusable platform capabilities. * Define the function - as one of our first FDEs, help define what forward-deployed engineering looks like here: the playbooks, tooling, and culture of the function. ## Related Videos - [Shipping Faster with Less: Render on Cloud Hosting, AI Workloads, and the Future of DevOps](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/1894-shipping-faster-with-less-render-on-cloud-hosting-ai-workloads-and-the-future-of-devops) - [How to Benchmark Your Apache Kafka](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/76-how-to-benchmark-your-apache-kafka) - [Data Science in Retail](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/586-data-science-in-retail) - [How Cisco embraced a DevOps culture within its network engineering team](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/99-how-cisco-embraced-a-devops-culture-within-its-network-engineering-team) - [Hacking AI at the Edge of the Indian Ocean](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/100177-hacking-ai-at-the-edge-of-the-indian-ocean) - [Remote Driving on Plant Grounds with State-of-the-Art Cloud Technologies](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/251-remote-driving-on-plant-grounds-with-state-of-the-art-cloud-technologies) ## Related Articles - [How to Become an AI Engineer](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/331-how-to-become-an-ai-engineer) - [Navigating the AI Shift](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/629-navigating-the-ai-shift) - [From Prototype to Production: Build AI Agents with This Free 4-Course Learning Path](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/655-from-prototype-to-production-build-ai-agents-with-this-free-4-course-learning-path) - [Highest Paying Tech Companies for Developers](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/220-highest-paying-tech-companies-for-developers) - [MLOps And AI Driven Development](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/82-mlops-and-ai-driven-development) - [MLOps – What’s the deal behind it?](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/125-mlops-what-s-the-deal-behind-it)