Forward Deployed Engineer

About Comet Lab

Comet Lab puts AI to work inside a company's operations. The firm maps where AI fits within a business, then builds it: workflow automation, custom AI applications, and open source tools reshaped around how a team already works. Work spans client environments and Comet Lab's own products.

Role summary

The role is forward deployed. The engineer works inside client environments and on Comet Lab's own products, carrying an engagement from technical discovery through to systems running in production.

The founders define the high level architecture for each engagement, covering how information moves between departments, which workflows AI belongs in, and the role AI plays within each one.

This position owns everything downstream of that definition. It spans technical planning and feasibility assessment, the build itself, and the infrastructure the resulting systems run on.

Indicative allocation of time:

• 50 per cent technical planning and feasibility
• 25 per cent build
• 25 per cent infrastructure and deployment

The planning half carries the greater weight. A plan that has been properly tested makes the build straightforward.

This role is not suited to

• Candidates whose experience is confined to one layer of a larger team's system
• Candidates whose AI experience consists of prompting within no-code tools, with no code underneath
• Candidates who prefer to delegate the build and review the output
• Candidates who require a fully specified brief before starting

Terms

• Location: Mumbai, on-site, full time
• Working relationship: direct engagement with the founders, across client systems and Comet Lab's own products

How to apply

Applications should include a CV and a short note describing a system the candidate designed, built and deployed personally. The note should identify the point at which the initial plan proved wrong, and what changed as a result.