Forward deployed engineer

Why Upgraid exists

Buildings are the world’s largest asset class, consume ~40% of energy globally (and generate the same share of greenhouse gas emissions), and shape the way we live, work, play, and interact. They are foundational to human societies. There are billions of them, from skyscrapers to data centers, malls, warehouses, and single-family homes.

Hundreds of millions — perhaps billions — of these buildings would benefit from upgrades. These upgrades would reduce energy costs, improve health, and create more attractive spaces for residents, consumers, students, patients, and more. But the way building upgrades are done today is archaic. Physical inspections, owners with no understanding of the systems in their buildings, and expensive manual energy audits of variable quality make the old way of doing things untenable.

Instead, imagine if every building could tell you exactly how it wants to be upgraded — what to fix, what it would save, and how fast it pays back. That’s what we’re building. Our AI model reads the built environment from space, runs advanced energy simulations, and delivers a ready-to-pitch upgrade proposal for every property. It’s how we will accelerate building upgrades globally.

Who we are and where we’re at

Our experienced founding team includes a former McKinsey partner and leader of built environment sustainability, an experienced product leader, and an MIT building scientist. We have rapidly closed our funding round, have advisors who have built companies from zero to IPO and senior leaders from the industry. We have recently been accepted to Greentown Labs, the world’s leading climate tech incubator. We have paying customers who consider our product a quantum leap in how building upgrades are done. We are going places fast and would like incredibly bright and talented people to join us.

What you’ll help build

As a founding Forward-Deployed Engineer, you will work side by side with senior functional and technical client team members to understand and identify their business needs and transform them into production-ready code.

• Customer-specific features: Work directly with clients to understand their needs, then design and build the right solution on top of the Upgraid core product, spanning frontend components, backend services and data integrations.
• Production-ready solutions from ambiguous requirements: Communicate directly with clients and non-technical stakeholders. Transform their ambiguous requirements into clear technical scope, architect the solution, and ship production-ready code end-to-end.
• Solutions across the full stack: Requested customer features can touch multiple layers of the application. You'll build across frontend, backend, APIs, and data integrations depending on what the problem demands.

Day-to-day (Your First 90 Days)

Month 1: Client & product understanding

• Get up to speed on the core stack (Python, FastAPI, PostgreSQL, AWS) and develop a solid understanding of the platform architecture and the product.
• Get to know the industry, our clients, and the problems we solve for them. Join client calls, sit in on demos, and learn how customers actually use the platform.

Month 2: First customer-specific deliveries

• Take ownership of your first customer-specific feature or integration: scope it with guidance from the team, build it, and ship it to a real client.
• Work directly with client stakeholders: gather their requirements, translate them into technical specifications, iterate based on their feedback and deliver a solution that fits their workflow.

Month 3: E2E ownership

• Own a customer-driven feature end-to-end: scope it with the customer, design the solution, and ship it.
• Act as the technical point of contact for one of our customers. You own the relationship and the delivery end-to-end.

In 6 months, success looks like

• You have delivered multiple customer-specific features end-to-end, from the initial client conversation through to production, and customers are actively using what you have built.
• You are the trusted technical counterpart for our customers: they bring you their hardest problems and you turn them into working solutions.
• You understand our customers as well as you understand the product. You can walk into a new client conversation, quickly identify what they need, and know how to build it.

The kind of problems you’ll enjoy

• No two customers and feature requests are the same: Every client brings a different set of needs, data, and constraints. You enjoy the variety and can adapt quickly to new problem domains.
• Technical depth meets client interaction: You enjoy writing code and architecting solutions, but you also like sitting with a customer and figuring out what they actually need. You want both in your workweek, not one or the other.
• Ambiguity doesn't slow you down: Customers often can't articulate exactly what they need, requirements will be vague, and priorities will shift. You see that as the interesting part of the job, not the frustrating part.

You might have done some of this

• Worked directly with clients, stakeholders, or non-technical users and have experience turning their vague requirements into concrete technical solutions, whether through consulting, customer-facing engineering, internships, or projects with real users.
• Built and deployed full-stack web applications using Python and a modern JS framework (Svelte, React, Vue, or similar). Experience with relational data models and databases (PostgreSQL or equivalent).
• Taken a feature or project from loosely defined requirements through to a working solution in production, without needing everything specified upfront.
• CS degree or equivalent experience (new grads welcome!).

What makes this role special

• Early team ownership: You’ll join an experienced founding team — a former McKinsey partner, a technical founder with deep energy expertise, and an experienced operator.
• Technical and client-facing: You'll split your time between writing code and working directly with customers to shape what gets built. Both are core to the role.
• Surface area that matters: Every deployment you land directly contributes to bending the curve down on global emissions.

What we value

• Intellectual Curiosity: A desire to learn the “why” behind building energy systems, AI models, and our customers’ businesses.
• Pragmatic rigor: Measure, ship, iterate.
• Low-ego collaboration: Teach, learn, and write things down.