Forward Deployed Engineer at Pastel

Role Summary

• We are seeking a Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) to drive the successful deployment, integration, and optimization of Pastel’s AI systems within customer environments.
• This is a highly strategic and customer-facing engineering role. You will operate at the intersection of engineering, product, and customer impact — ensuring our AI infrastructure works seamlessly in real-world banking and fintech environments.
• You will embed with customer teams, solve complex integration challenges, customize workflows, and ensure our systems deliver measurable business value in production.
• This is not a back-office role. You will be on the front lines of deployment and enterprise execution.

Key Responsibilities

Customer Deployment & Integration

• Lead technical implementation of Pastel’s AI systems in customer production environments.
• Integrate with banking systems, fintech platforms, APIs, and legacy infrastructure.
• Align on architecture decisions with customer engineering, compliance, and risk teams.
• Troubleshoot and resolve deployment challenges in real time.
• Ensure smooth go-live processes and production stability.

Engineering & Customization

• Write clean, production-grade code to support customer-specific requirements.
• Build integrations, automation workflows, and configuration layers.
• Optimize AI model outputs within customer operational workflows.
• Improve scalability, performance, and reliability of deployed systems.
• Translate ambiguous enterprise needs into technical solutions.

Product & Engineering Collaboration

• Partner with Product and Core Engineering to translate field insights into roadmap improvements.
• Identify repeatable integration patterns to reduce custom engineering over time.
• Contribute to internal deployment playbooks and implementation best practices.
• Support pre-sales technical deep dives and solution architecture discussions when needed.

Customer Impact & Value Delivery

• Accelerate time-to-value for new customers.
• Drive adoption of advanced AI capabilities.
• Act as a trusted technical advisor during critical engagements.
• Own customer outcomes end-to-end.

Expectations

At Pastel, Forward Deployed Engineers are expected to:

• Operate with high ownership and accountability.
• Be proactive, resourceful, and comfortable in ambiguity.
• Move fast while maintaining strong engineering discipline.
• Communicate clearly with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Balance startup speed with enterprise-grade reliability.
• Represent Pastel professionally in customer-facing environments.

Your work directly affects revenue, retention, and reputation.

Required Qualifications

• 3+ years of experience in software engineering, solutions engineering, or technical consulting.
• Strong backend engineering skills (Python, Node.js, or similar).
• Experience building and integrating REST APIs.
• Experience working with cloud infrastructure (AWS and/or GCP).
• Strong debugging skills and systems-level thinking.
• Experience working directly with customers or external stakeholders.
• Understanding of production-grade deployments and distributed systems.

Strong Advantage

• Experience in fintech, banking, fraud detection, or risk systems.
• Experience deploying AI/ML-powered products.
• Knowledge of compliance, security, or enterprise data environments.
• DevOps or infrastructure experience.
• Experience operating in high-growth startup environments.

Travel Requirement

This role requires availability to travel to support customer deployments and enterprise engagements.

• On-site integration sessions with banks, fintechs, and enterprise clients.
• Travel frequency will depend on implementation cycles and customer needs.
• Candidates must be comfortable representing Pastel in professional enterprise environments.