Forward Deployed Engineer
Summary
Forward Deployed Engineer at Ironsite who embeds on construction jobsites to build integrations, data pipelines, and tooling that connect AI-driven site-capture data to contractor systems (Procore, Autodesk Build, Primavera P6). Stack: Python, TypeScript, SQL. Frequent travel to active construction projects nationwide.
About Ironsite
Ironsite is building the intelligence layer for the physical world. We design our own wearable hardware, deploy it alongside craft workers, and transform a shift's footage into a next-morning report. Our internal team and purpose-built models label the data overnight and deliver actionable insights to superintendents by 5 AM.
We are accelerating the speed, efficiency, and predictability of construction, especially for complex, mission-critical infrastructure projects, including data centers, LNG facilities, sports stadiums, hospitals, and other large-scale developments, by training AI models on egocentric construction footage and labor productivity data. We are built with a pro-worker philosophy at our core: we believe technology should empower the workforce, not replace it. We're working to give craft workers and project leaders better visibility into what's happening on-site, while creating a system where the reality of construction and the chaos of each day is finally available to the people running the project.
Ironsite is deployed across several of the largest active construction projects in the country. To date, we've captured more than 100,000 hours of construction footage across seven states, now process thousands of hours of site activity every day, and maintain a worker opt-out rate below two percent. This is enabled by a workforce-first architecture that anonymizes devices, captures no audio, and never releases raw video.
Ironsite is backed by leading investors (8VC, South Park Commons, Saga Ventures) and prominent operators across technology and construction, including Eric Schmidt, Jeff Dean, Jeff Rothschild, Mark Leslie, Scott Wu, Eric Glyman, Karim Atiyeh, Russell Kaplan, and others, alongside over a dozen construction industry operators who have joined us as partners in building this.
Longer term, we believe Ironsite is the foundation for what construction becomes in the next decade. We think the systems we're building are the operating system for how the physical world gets built, and will unlock a fundamentally different way of respect for our workforce. One where craft workers are more valued, more visible, and better paid for the skill they bring, and where the industry finally has the intelligence layer that makes autonomous construction possible. Both futures start with the same foundation.
The Role
Forward Deployed Engineers are how Ironsite turns the reality of the jobsite into working software.
You're an engineer first. You write code, build integrations, and ship tools. But you do it from inside the problem, on jobsites, in trailers, and on calls with the contractors who use what you build.
This is a forward deployed role adapted for construction. You'll embed alongside our Deployment Operators (senior operational leaders from the field) and directly with customers, understand how a specific builder actually runs their work, and then build the integrations, pipelines, and tooling that connect Ironsite's data to the systems and decisions that matter to them: their work breakdown structure, cost codes, schedules, and reporting. What you learn on site doesn't get written into a ticket and handed off. You build the fix.
You'll work closely with our Product lead and in tight coordination with our Deployment, Ground Truth, Hardware, Infrastructure, and Engineering teams. The best people in this seat are rare. They can hold a technical design conversation in the morning and a conversation with a thirty-year superintendent at lunch, and they're equally at home in both.
What You'll Do
Build for the field.
- Design and ship integrations between Ironsite's platform and customer systems (scheduling tools, project management platforms like Procore and Autodesk Build, and internal reporting).
- Map Ironsite's capture and labels to each contractor's own work breakdown structure and labor codes so our data connects to cost and schedule, not just video.
- Build internal tooling that makes deployments, Ground Truth labeling, and analytics faster and more reliable.
- Prototype quickly on site, then harden what works into production.
Embed with customers and crews.
- Deploy to jobsites to understand the real workflow. How a superintendent plans the day, where data actually enters a decision, and what a generic tool always gets wrong.
- Partner with Deployment Operators, who own the day-to-day field relationship, and translate what you both see into software.
- Sit with customer leadership to scope integrations and reporting, then own delivery end to end.
Turn field work into product.
- Feed structured observations back to Product, Engineering, Hardware, and AI. You'll be the reason a data model changes or a new integration ships.
- Partner with the Ground Truth team to make sure our activity taxonomy reflects what's actually happening on site. The trades, sequences, and edge cases that generic categories miss.
- Help decide what's worth building, because you're the person who has seen the problem in person.
Own delivery.
- Take integrations and tools from first scope through production, with real users depending on them.
- Write maintainable code and document what you build so the next deployment inherits it.
- Balance the speed a startup needs with the reliability a jobsite demands.
Technical Challenges You'll Solve
- Building integrations against tools that were built decades ago. Procore, Autodesk Build, Primavera P6, MS Project, and the long tail of contractor-specific ERP and cost systems. These platforms have inconsistent APIs, legacy data models, and quirks you won't find in any documentation. You'll figure out what actually works.
- Turning capture into cost and schedule. Ironsite generates ground truth about what happened on site. The interesting engineering problem is mapping that ground truth into the specific work breakdown structure, cost codes, and schedule activities each contractor uses. Get this right and Ironsite becomes a financial instrument. Get it wrong and it's another dashboard.
- Shipping software with a real deadline. Superintendents open our reports before crews arrive on site. If a pipeline breaks or an integration goes stale, the first person to notice is a construction executive who was counting on that data. You'll build with the reliability that reality demands.
- Working with data that's messier than any benchmark. Real construction data is inconsistent, incomplete, and sometimes contradictory. You'll build the systems that make it usable, and you'll do it without pretending the messiness isn't there.
What We're Looking For
Required
- 2+ years building software in production. You own features end to end, not just tickets.
- Strong general engineering ability. Comfortable across backend, data, and APIs, and able to pick up whatever a problem needs. Our stack leans Python, TypeScript, and SQL. You don't need all of it on day one, but you need to learn fast.
- Comfort with ambiguity and high autonomy. You'll often be the only Ironsite engineer on site, scoping and building in real time.
- Strong communication across very different audiences. You can align with an engineer and earn the trust of a field superintendent in the same day.
- Willingness to travel to active jobsites regularly (typically 5-10 days per month), including multi-day deployments.
- Comfort working in active construction environments. Outdoors, in varied weather, at height, and in compliance with site-specific safety requirements.
- Valid driver's license and ability to travel domestically without restriction.
Strongly preferred
- Prior forward deployed, solutions, integration, or field engineering experience. You've built software embedded with customers, not just from a home office.
- Construction or construction-tech experience, or genuine fluency in how a project runs (WBS or cost-code structures, schedules, labor productivity).
- Experience building data pipelines or integrations against third-party APIs.
Nice to have
- Familiarity with construction platforms (Procore, Autodesk Build, Primavera P6, MS Project).
- Exposure to data or ML workflows, computer vision, or analytics tooling.
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Construction Management, Civil Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
- OSHA 10 or OSHA 30, or willingness to obtain.
- Bilingual (English / Spanish). A large share of the crews we work with are Spanish-speaking.
What Success Looks Like
- First 30 days. You know the hardware, the data model, and how capture becomes metrics. You've been out on 2-3 deployments, developed 90-day roadmaps with 1-2 customers, and shipped your first internal improvement or integration for one of our customers.
- First 90 days. You've built out roadmaps for your customer accounts alongside our Product team, and delivered on 75% of your initial roadmap.
- First 6 months. You're the person who turns a whole class of field problems into shipped software, and your work has visibly changed both what we build and how fast we deploy.
Location, Compensation, & Perks
We're hiring Forward Deployed Engineers based in the San Francisco Bay Area. You'll be anchored in our SF office and responsible for one of our three regional markets (Bay Area, Texas, or East Coast), traveling to active projects nationwide.
Compensation & Perks:
- Base salary: $100k-$160k per year, commensurate with experience and location
- Meaningful early-stage equity. We want the people closest to the customer to own a real piece of the outcome.
- Travel fully covered, with per diem
- Full benefits including health, dental, and vision coverage
- Company hardware and field gear
- 401(k) with 6% match
Final compensation is determined by experience, location, and level.
Why This Role
Most software companies serving construction have never had someone on a jobsite at 6 AM. We have, constantly, and it's the reason our product works.
As a Forward Deployed Engineer, you sit where an industry that runs on experience meets software that's finally good enough to help. You won't build in a vacuum. You'll see the problem in person, build the fix, and watch a superintendent use it the next week. You'll have unusual influence over what we build, direct relationships with the largest builders in the country, and a front-row seat as this category gets defined.
If you're an engineer who's wondered why the tools are so far behind the work, and you want to be on the jobsite, not just adjacent to it, this is the job.