Forward Deployed Engineer

Title: Forward Deployed Engineer

Location: San Francisco

Department: Commercial

Job Description:

Unstructured is defining the standard for enterprise data transformation in the age of LLMs and generative AI. In just two years, we've raised over $65M from world-class investors, including Menlo Ventures, Bain Capital, Databricks, NVIDIA, Microsoft, and IBM.
Our open-source toolkit has been downloaded 61M+ times and is used by 90% of the Fortune 1000. We power production AI workflows across commercial and federal sectors — transforming PDFs, HTML, Word docs, images, emails, and more into AI-ready data pipelines that scale.
We're not just building tools, we're building the backbone of generative AI and the infrastructure that unlocks intelligence across industries.

The Mission

Ready to drive real-world impact by helping enterprises harness the power of unstructured data and AI?

At Unstructured, we’re building the backbone of generative AI—enabling companies to transform PDFs, HTML, Word docs, images, and more into enterprise-grade data pipelines. Our open-source package has been downloaded over 52+ million times, with adoption across 50,000+ companies, including nearly half of the Fortune 500.

We’re entering our next chapter of growth, and we’re hiring an experienced Forward Deployed Engineer to help bring our commercial customers from purchase to production with ease.

If you're a technical problem solver who loves working directly with customers, designing real-world solutions, and seeing impact fast - this is your moment. You’ll be a core part of our commercial team, leading enterprise deployments, building scalable cloud-native architectures, and ensuring customers unlock the full potential of our platform.

What You’ll Own & Drive

Lead High-Impact Deployments

Design and deliver secure, scalable post-sales implementations for commercial customers—across AWS, GCP, and Azure

Be the Trusted Technical Partner

Guide customers through architecture, integration, optimization, and tuning—especially around AI/LLM and RAG use cases

 Build the Toolkits That Scale

Create reference architectures, onboarding guides, and playbooks that reduce time-to-value and accelerate adoption

Drive Technical Success

Run enablement sessions, whiteboarding workshops, and POCs to maximize customer value and foster long-term partnerships

Troubleshoot the Hard Stuff

Solve complex infrastructure and data pipeline issues—ensuring stability, observability, and high performance

Shape the Product

Feed customer insights directly to Product & Engineering to shape our roadmap and improve enterprise capabilities

What You Bring

• 5+ years of experience in post-sales engineering, solutions architecture, or technical consulting
• Deep experience with cloud-native architectures (AWS, Azure, GCP), containers (Docker, Kubernetes), and IaC tools
• Strong hands-on Python skills for scripting, API integration, and automation
• Proven success leading enterprise-scale deployments and solving real customer problems with technical precision
• Excellent communicator—you simplify the complex and build trust across both engineering and business audiences
• Comfort navigating ambiguity and speed—especially in startup or high-growth environments
• Willing to travel up to 20%

Bonus Points

• Experience delivering or optimizing RAG pipelines, vector databases, or LLM-based applications
• Knowledge of DevSecOps best practices and commercial security/compliance frameworks (SOC 2, ISO 27001)
• Familiarity with both pre-sales and post-sales solutioning across AI/ML workflows
• Startup DNA - you move fast, stay scrappy, and take ownership end-to-end

Why You’ll Love It Here

• Real Customer Impact: Work with top global companies solving bleeding-edge AI use cases
• Mission-Critical Work: Your solutions will directly power AI deployments in production
• Ownership & Autonomy: Be trusted to drive results and innovate from day one
• Elite Team: Join world-class builders who value humility, speed, and precision
• Strong Benefits: Competitive salary, full health benefits, equity, and parental leave

You'll be surrounded by smart, kind, low-ego people who genuinely enjoy building together. We invest in our team with company offsites, best-in-tech swag, and the tools you need to do your best work, wherever you're based.

We support you holistically, not just at work. From medical, dental, and vision coverage effective the 1st of the month following your start date, life and disability insurance, unlimited PTO, and flexible parental leave, to a 401(k) with company match, equity, a $500 work from home stipend, $70/month internet reimbursement, and team/company offsites throughout the year - we want you focused on building, growing, and staying energized for the long haul.

Ready to help companies unlock the full power of unstructured data?

Apply now to join Unstructured and shape the future of AI delivery.