--- title: 'Forward Deployed Engineer New Grad at Novita AI' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/forward-deployed-engineer-new-grad-novita-ai-san-mateo-npkw5njv940g' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-10-19' --- # Forward Deployed Engineer New Grad at Novita AI - **Company:** Novita AI - **Location:** San Mateo, CA - **Employment:** full-time - **Work type:** onsite - **Posted:** 2026-10-12 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-19 - **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/novita-ai/0d9d673e-0753-4a38-bbf2-4ec019a0b26e ## Job description ## About Novita AI Novita AI is an AI & Agent Cloud platform for builders. We provide high-performance Model APIs, dedicated inference infrastructure, and Agent Sandbox environments that help developers and enterprises build, deploy, and scale production AI applications. ## The Role As a Forward Deployed Engineer, you’ll work directly with customers building some of the most demanding AI applications. You’ll operate at the intersection of software engineering, infrastructure, product, and customer success. You may spend one day helping an AI startup diagnose inference latency, another helping a coding-agent company scale thousands of sandbox environments, and another building an integration that becomes a reusable product capability. You will be expected not only to solve technical problems, but also to understand why those problems matter to the customer and what is required for their workload to successfully reach production. ## What You’ll Do - Own the technical relationship with customers from evaluation through production. - Understand customer architectures, workloads, and engineering requirements. - Deploy and integrate: - Model APIs and inference endpoints - Dedicated model serving - Agent Sandbox environments - Debug issues across APIs, containers, Linux, networking, model serving, and distributed systems. - Analyze inference performance including latency, throughput, concurrency, caching, and reliability. - Build customer-specific integrations, prototypes, tools, and automation. - Support PoCs and help customers transition into production. - Work closely with Technical Account Executives on capacity planning, quotas, pricing considerations, and workload expansion. - Identify opportunities where customers can expand their usage of Novita. - Translate recurring customer problems into product requirements. - Build reusable tooling and reference implementations that improve the experience for future customers. - Work closely with engineering teams across the US and Asia. ## What We’re Looking For ## Requirements - Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related technical field. - Strong software engineering fundamentals. - Proficiency in Python and experience with at least one additional programming language. - Strong understanding of APIs, Linux, networking, and cloud-native applications. - Experience debugging complex technical systems. - Strong written and verbal communication skills. - Comfortable working directly with customers. - High ownership and ability to operate in ambiguous environments. - Ability to move quickly between engineering, product, and customer problems. ## Nice to Have - Experience with LLMs, AI agents, or inference infrastructure. - Familiarity with vLLM, SGLang, Ray, or distributed serving frameworks. - Experience with Docker and Kubernetes. - Understanding of model serving performance, including batching, caching, throughput, latency, and concurrency. - Experience building coding agents, AI agents, or sandboxed execution systems. - Open-source contributions, startup experience, or significant technical side projects. - Background in solutions engineering, developer relations, technical consulting, or other customer-facing technical roles. - Interest in the commercial side of technology, including how usage, pricing, and product adoption connect. - Professional working proficiency in Mandarin Chinese. What Success Looks Like Within your first year, you will: - Independently own the technical relationship with multiple customers. - Help strategic customers successfully move workloads into production. - Become a trusted technical advisor to customer engineering teams. - Build reusable solutions that accelerate future deployments. - Identify technical and product opportunities that increase customer adoption. - Influence Novita’s product roadmap through direct exposure to real production workloads. ## About Novita AI ## Company Overview - **One-liner**: Novita AI is an AI-native cloud platform providing model APIs, serverless and dedicated GPU infrastructure, and secure agent sandbox environments for developers building production AI applications. - **Entity Type**: Private (Seed stage) - **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, United States (with presence in Singapore and China) - **Founded**: 2024 - **Founders**: Ben Li (CEO) ## Core Business - **Primary Industry**: AI Infrastructure / Cloud Computing - **Target Customers**: B2B — AI-native startups, research teams, independent developers, and enterprises building agentic and generative AI applications. - **Mission**: To lower the barrier to building powerful AI systems by making AI infrastructure open, efficient, and developer-first. ## Products & Services - **Serverless Model APIs**: Access to 200+ open-source and multimodal models (text, image, audio, video) via a single API. Billed by token, not by hour. No infrastructure to manage. - **GPU Instances & Bare Metal**: On-demand, dedicated GPU instances and physical clusters for large-scale inference, training, and enterprise deployments. Predictable performance with isolated resources. - **Agent Sandbox**: A secure, isolated microVM execution environment for autonomous agents. Features sub-200ms startup times, ephemeral filesystem isolation, per-second billing, and stateful pause/resume. Built on Firecracker technology. ## Market Standing - **Valuation**: Not publicly disclosed. The company is early-stage (founded 2024). - **Key Metric**: Total Funding — Not publicly disclosed. The company is privately held and appears to be seed-stage. - **Headcount**: 12 employees (as of early 2026), with +125% YoY growth. - **Notable Investors/Partners**: Not publicly disclosed. Talent sources include Foundation Capital, Credit Key, and several AI/tech companies, suggesting some investor/advisor connections. - **Growth Signals**: - Launched Agent Sandbox in April 2026, targeting the rapidly growing autonomous agent market. - 2,116 LinkedIn followers ( +205% YoY), indicating strong brand interest. - Active hiring for Account Executive and Forward Deployed Engineer roles. - Growing engineering team with presence across the US, Singapore, and China. ## Competitive Advantages - **Full-stack AI infrastructure**: Uniquely combines model APIs, GPU compute, and agent sandboxes on one platform — reducing complexity for developers who would otherwise stitch together multiple vendors. - **Cost efficiency**: Claims up to 50% less than major cloud providers, with serverless billing (pay per token/execution, not idle time). - **Developer-first design**: Built for agents and AI workloads from day one, with fast startup times (sub-200ms for sandboxes), simple APIs, and no-install integrations for agent frameworks. - **Performance isolation**: Dedicated kernels, bare metal options, and no noisy neighbors — critical for production AI workloads. ## Strategic Focus - **Agent infrastructure**: The Agent Sandbox launch signals a major bet on the autonomous agent market, providing secure execution environments for agentic workflows. - **Global expansion**: Presence in US, Singapore, and China — likely targeting both Western and Asian AI developer markets. - **Open-source ecosystem**: Emphasis on supporting open-source models and providing a frictionless path from prototype to production. - **Scaling team**: Active hiring in go-to-market (Account Executive) and technical roles (Forward Deployed Engineer), suggesting a push to grow customer base and enterprise adoption. ## Why Work Here - **Cutting-edge space**: Work on infrastructure that powers the next generation of AI agents and applications — at the intersection of cloud, AI, and developer tools. - **Small, fast-growing team**: 12 employees with rapid growth trajectory. High impact per person, likely with significant ownership and autonomy. - **Strong culture signals**: Perfect 5.0/5.0 employer rating on LinkedIn (1 review) with top marks for work-life balance, compensation, and culture. Career growth rated 4.0/5.0. - **Global, distributed team**: Presence in San Francisco, Singapore, and China. Roles appear to be hybrid/onsite in San Francisco, with some remote flexibility. - **Engineering culture**: "Built for developers, priced for startups" — the product itself reflects a deep understanding of developer needs. Likely a technically rigorous environment. - **Key roles open**: Chief of Staff, Account Executive, Forward Deployed Engineer — indicating a push to operationalize and scale the business. ## Sources 1. [novita.ai](https://novita.ai/) 2. [LinkedIn - Novita AI](https://www.linkedin.com/company/novita-ai-labs) 3. [Built In - Novita AI Careers](https://builtin.com/company/novita-ai) 4. [benched.ai - Novita Profile](https://benched.ai/companies/novita) 5. [Novita AI Documentation](https://novita.ai/docs) ## Other roles at Novita AI - [Forward Deployed Engineer Intern](https://feeny.ai/job/forward-deployed-engineer-intern-novita-ai-san-mateo-g21sq0qnz358) — San Mateo, CA - [Technical GTM Intern](https://feeny.ai/job/technical-gtm-intern-novita-ai-san-mateo-n15vjfg4zep0) — San Mateo, CA - [Forward Deployed Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/forward-deployed-engineer-novita-ai-san-mateo-qm9q55p3bm10) — San Mateo, CA - [Account Executive](https://feeny.ai/job/account-executive-novita-ai-san-mateo-ce8a66gsf9gh) — San Mateo, CA