Founding Forward-Deployed Engineer (Junior / Mid-level)

We're hiring for a founding FDE at Rig. Rig is building AI-native data infrastructure. Think Stripe or Vercel, but for data. We help companies connect all their data sources up, map them out, migrate data accurately between systems, and build a 'brain' that sits on top of it that helps AI agents and LLMs understand, and safely access, that data. It's the sort of deeply unsexy but actually very interesting work that appeals to some people and not others. If you're in the "appeals to me" camp, read on!

The FDE role at Rig is quite unique. Firstly, you do not need to be a software engineer or data engineer. Some experience with coding, AI coding, data analysis or data engineering is key, but we'll teach you and give you the best AI tools you can wish for, including Rig itself. Secondly, it's a full-stack role: you're customer facing, from strategy during the sales process, to technical data mapping and delivery, through the 'customer success/enablement' steps too. We're all generalists here, at heart.

We're an early-stage AI startup, so we care that you are:

1. Very technically-minded: whether from a strictly technical background or not, you must be a builder, and absolutely AI-obsessed!
2. Very strong on client communication: if you just like coding, this isn't for you. You'll work with executives like CFOs and CROs to determine the strategy for migrating or mapping complex systems of record, build a plan that knocks their socks off, then deliver on it, and empower their team to use the platform with less and less of your help over time.

We raised a pre-seed round from VCs and angels we know and trust 6 months ago, so you're joining very early on, as the 5th or 6th team member. We're two technical founders, another FDE, a generalist, a sales / GTM person, and…you!

We have a pretty intense work culture: 5 days a week in office in Shoreditch, and we work hard. 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.

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 read what the platform actually does, what teams have built with it, and some thoughts from Toby, our CEO, on how we are building Rig on his substack. On this role in particular, he wrote about why we don't hire seniors any more.