Founding deployment strategist

We're hiring for a founding deployment strategist at Rig. Rig is an AI-native data and systems integrator. We build the data infrastructure and tooling to help scale-ups and mid-market companies solve the core data problems blocking effective AI use in the company. We're a SaaS and services firm, offering a platform that ingests, unifies and makes sense of complex data from across systems, and forward-deployed engineers (FDEs) who help manage migrations and integrations of those systems.

This is the first deployment strategist role at Rig, and will mostly inherit work owned by the CEO: building relationships with executives, understanding their systems and needs, shaping the solution and planning the delivery, then executing it with support from an FDE.

To succeed in the role you do not need to be a software engineer or data engineer. Some experience with coding, AI coding, data analysis or data engineering is useful, but we'll teach you and give you the best AI tools you can wish for, including Rig itself. The work goes beyond talking. We'd rather you have a background in senior client-facing technical project work, such as technical or ops-heavy consulting. You also might have been a former engineer, or a non-engineer who got really into Claude Code. But if you don't have several years in senior client-facing work, it's not for you.

You should expect to do everything from pre-sales calls right down to customer success, through the lens of deployment strategy. This means:

1. Joining early calls to demo the platform in a way that's relevant to the customer's needs.
2. Building or shaping platform features or implementation plans to ensure compatibility with the client's infrastructure.
3. Presenting strategy and plans back to the customer to get buy-in.
4. Overseeing delivery across multiple large, strategic accounts.

It's pretty varied, and we don't have much hierarchy or red tape. If you like strategy, extremely client-obsessed execution and tight project management without getting out any PRINCE-style qualifications or waterfall diagrams, you'll enjoy the work here.

1. A real-time, technical thinker: You can quickly absorb the details of a client's systems and data problems, map out how we'd solve them, and conceive of a strategy to get there. You think like an engineer and communicate like a CEO.
2. Commercially experienced: You've worked in client-facing roles, and directly worked with senior executives in the mid-market or enterprise segments.
3. A relationship builder: You build long-term relationships with senior people, earn trust and know your stuff.
4. Experience with complex technical or data systems: You have deployed, decoded, explained or sold these systems. Engineering experience is optional.
5. Hands-on project delivery: You've managed, planned and presented high-pressure strategic projects, including rolling up your sleeves on the actual work. Making slides is only part of it.

We raised a pre-seed round from VCs and angels we know and trust nine months ago, so you're joining very early on, as the 7th or 8th team member. We're two technical founders, two FDEs, a founders associate, a sales and GTM person, and you!

We have a pretty intense work culture: five days a week in office in Shoreditch, and we work hard, though we don't like the performative 996 bullshit. We're looking for someone very hands-on, strong on details, and obviously who loves to understand people's problems and sell solutions to them.

You'll get decent total comp including a slice of the company, but we're not very top of market on comp. We're two exited former founders who've been through the ringer before on the startup journey, so hope we can offer you a no-BS, low-ego environment where you can help build and scale something great.

You can find out more about Rig and read some thoughts from Toby, our CEO, on how we are building Rig on his Substack.