Founding Forward Deployed Engineer

📋 Description

• • **Join Glean as a Founding Forward Deployed Engineer: Shape the Future of AI-Powered Knowledge Management**
• • Are you a visionary engineer with a passion for building groundbreaking products from the ground up? Do you thrive in ambiguous environments, possess a deep understanding of AI, and excel at translating complex business challenges into elegant technical solutions? Glean, a leader in AI-powered knowledge management, is seeking a Founding Forward Deployed Engineer to join our elite team. This is a unique opportunity to operate with the autonomy and accountability of a founder, driving the creation of Glean's next generation of product surfaces.
• • *About Glean:**
• • Founded in 2019, Glean is at the forefront of revolutionizing how organizations manage and access information. Our AI-powered platform seamlessly integrates with essential tools like Google Drive, Slack, and Microsoft Teams, empowering employees to find, organize, and share knowledge effortlessly. By harnessing cutting-edge AI, Glean ensures that the right information is accessible at the right time, significantly boosting productivity and fostering collaboration. Our mission, driven by Founder & CEO Arvind Jain's vision, is to eliminate the friction of fragmented knowledge and sprawling SaaS tools, enabling teams to leverage their collective intelligence more effectively. Glean is more than just an enterprise search tool; it's the leading Work AI platform, combining powerful search, an intelligent AI assistant, and robust application-building capabilities to redefine the modern workplace.
• • *The Opportunity: Be a Founder, Build the Future**
• • As a founding member of Glean's Forward Deployed team, you will be instrumental in discovering and building entirely new product experiences. Working in close collaboration with Forward Deployed Product Managers (FDPMs) and directly engaging with the C-suite of the world's most influential companies, you will identify and solve the biggest, most complex unsolved business problems. This role is not about configuring existing solutions or optimizing within predefined boundaries. Instead, you will be a true innovator, architecting and shipping novel products that leverage Glean's horizontal AI platform. The most impactful solutions you develop will be scaled across Glean's entire global customer base, giving you founder-level ownership backed by Glean's extensive resources, relationships, and market scale.
• • *What You'll Do:**
• • **Pioneer 0-to-1 Product Creation:** Your primary responsibility is to conceptualize, design, and build new product surfaces for Glean. You will collaborate with your FDPM to pinpoint unmet needs within our strategic customer organizations where Glean's platform can be extended. You'll then bring these innovative solutions to life, with the understanding that your creations will become integral parts of Glean's core product offering.
• • **Lead Deep Opportunity Discovery:** Before writing a single line of code, you will immerse yourself in the customer's business. This involves identifying structural inefficiencies, pinpointing areas of untapped value, and determining the most feasible and impactful path to a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). You will work alongside your FDPM to formulate strong hypotheses and rigorously test them through direct engagement with key stakeholders.
• • **Serve as a Technical Partner to C-Suite Executives:** You will build and maintain trust with senior leadership within customer organizations, engaging not only with technical teams but also with executives accountable for business outcomes. Your ability to clearly articulate the technical vision, the rationale behind proposed solutions, and potential risks will be crucial in securing buy-in and driving adoption.
• • **Scale Successful Innovations:** Once a new product or feature demonstrates success and value, you will play a key role in making it repeatable and scalable. This involves close collaboration with Glean's core Research & Development (R&D) team to ensure that the solutions are robust, maintainable, and ready for widespread deployment.
• • **Collaborate with Glean's R&D Frontier:** You will maintain a close working relationship with Glean's central engineering and product teams. This ensures you stay abreast of the platform's latest capabilities and actively influence its future direction. Insights and challenges encountered in the field will directly inform the evolution of Glean's technology stack.
• • **Embrace a Founder's Mindset:** Approach every customer engagement with intense curiosity, a drive to understand the underlying business issues, and a proactive spirit to build what doesn't yet exist. You will be resourceful, move with speed to enable rapid learning, and be equally comfortable in high-level strategic discussions with CEOs as you are deep within a complex codebase.
• • **Drive Real-World Outcomes:** You have a proven history of shipping production software that delivers tangible results for users. You are eager to apply this experience to ambitious projects with significant impact, pushing the boundaries of what's possible in enterprise AI.
• • This role is ideal for an entrepreneurial engineer who wants to make a significant impact, build transformative products, and shape the trajectory of a rapidly growing AI company. If you are ready to take on founder-level challenges and build the future of work, we encourage you to apply.