Forward Deployed Engineer

Old problem, new $25B+ market

Companies like AWS, Stripe, and Twilio have shown that if a technology isn't core to your value proposition, you should offload it. Still, every engineering team builds and rebuilds one piece: authorization, how you control who has access to what in your app. We intend to change that.

We see a world where developers never roll their own authorization again, and instead say, "Just use Oso" – the same way you might say, "Oh, you should just use Postgres for that." In doing so, we're creating the $25B+ authorization market.

Why Oso?

We have the lead – in traction, capital, and team.

• Traction: Oso is used by thousands of companies from startups to the Fortune 500, like Wayfair, ProductBoard, Vanta, Brex, Verizon, ZoomInfo, and Duolingo.

• Capital: We're backed by the world’s best investors, including Sequoia, Felicis, and a standout group of infrastructure founders and operators: Olivier Pomel (Founder, Datadog), Dev Ittycheria (CEO, MongoDB), Armon Dadgar (Founder, HashiCorp), Edith Harbaugh (Founder, LaunchDarkly), Guy Podjarny (Founder, Snyk), Paul Copplestone (Founder, Supabase), Christina Cacioppo (Founder, Vanta), and Calvin French-Owen (Founder, Segment).

• Team: We've spent 4+ years going deep on the domain. We've met with thousands of engineering teams and know more about this problem than anyone. And we have some of the best developer go-to-market leaders on earth who have done it before at companies like MongoDB.

Why Now?

We're at an inflection point. What it takes to get from where we are today to a world where developers say “Just use Oso” is going to be different. And we see that.

We have new problems:

• We have over 100 paying customers

• We are a customer-driven company and we intend to work closely with these customers to continuously improve the product

These are good problems. The opportunity is for you to join at this inflection point, in a role that will give you the chance to solve these problems from first principles and help us build the strategy from a blank slate. You’ll work directly with the CEO and CTO.

What You'll Do

• Deliver custom solutions – As a Forward Deployed Engineer, you’ll work directly with customers who are live in production, helping them launch new features, integrate new systems, and adopt new parts of the Oso product. You’ll write backend code inside their environments, review PRs, and contribute to their architecture and implementation.

• Ramp fast on any codebase – You’ll be jumping into unfamiliar systems, across languages and frameworks. You’ll need to quickly understand how things work, unblock the customer, and deliver high-quality work that integrates cleanly with their stack.

• Lead technical delivery – You’ll own the full post-sales engineering experience—from planning to hands-on development to rollout. You’ll oversee code reviews, train customer teams, and advise on best practices. In some cases, you’ll be shipping critical functionality directly into their production systems.

• Bridge customer and product – You’ll be on the frontlines of customer usage and feedback. You’ll bring clarity to fuzzy requirements, identify recurring pain points, and translate those into actionable insights for our product and engineering teams.

Who You Are

• You’re a builder. You write clean backend code, move quickly, and enjoy solving problems at the systems level.

• You’re a polyglot. You’ve worked across multiple programming languages and tech stacks, and you’re comfortable jumping between them as needed.

• You’re customer-oriented. You listen closely, build trust fast, and care deeply about helping customers succeed.

• You’re a strong communicator. You can explain tradeoffs clearly, translate requirements into systems, and navigate both technical and non-technical audiences.

• You’re a startup person. You thrive in ambiguity, act quickly, and enjoy working on problems that don’t have obvious answers.

Requirements

• Backend engineering skills and ability to ramp quickly on unfamiliar codebases

• Experience integrating complex B2B SaaS products in customer environments

• Technical customer-facing experience in post-sales, implementation, or consulting roles

• Excellent communication and the ability to translate between technical and business needs

• Bias for action, ownership, and comfort in fast-paced, ambiguous environments

The starting salary for this role is between $120,000-$160,000/year plus equity. Your exact offer will vary based on a number of factors including experience level, skillset, market location, and balancing internal equity relative to peers at the company.

Oso is an equal opportunity employer. All applicants will be considered for employment regardless of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, age, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran or disability status.

Originally posted on Himalayas