---
title: 'Forward Deployed Engineer at Tenex'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/forward-deployed-engineer-tenex-new-york-7mzw4zhptjrx'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-10-14'
---

# Forward Deployed Engineer at Tenex

- **Company:** Tenex
- **Location:** New York, NY
- **Compensation:** $224k–$394k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-06-04
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-14
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/tenexlabs/2a359a2a-d5ed-48e8-96b8-b93826110ee9/application

**Skills:** Production software engineering, Agentic coding tools, AI workflow development, System architecture, Deployment, Open source contributions, Side projects, Applied AI engineering

> Tenex seeks a Forward Deployed Engineer to build and ship production AI workflows for Fortune 500 clients. The role involves owning features end-to-end, using agentic coding tools, and working onsite in New York City to deliver reliable, auditable agent systems.

## Job description

Tenex builds frontier AI that works in the real world. Our engineers sit with C-suite leaders, find where AI adds the most value, and ship bleeding-edge AI to production. We were founded in New York City in 2025. We are currently 70 people and will double by the end of the year. We build for Fortune 500 companies across media, healthcare, retail, finance, and sports. Anthropic, OpenAI, and Cursor build the frontier. As their trusted implementation partner, we turn technology into reliable systems businesses use every day.

## The Role

You’ll own client projects end to end: find where AI adds real value, decide the technical plan, build the whole system, and keep improving it in production. You’ll lead a few projects at a time in a pod run by an engineering manager, and every project brings a new industry. We look for engineers who:

- Have shipped and supported production software.
- Have built reliable systems with LLMs.
- Can explain decisions to a CEO or an engineer.
- Have real opinions on coding agents.

You will learn to structure work for agents, engineer context, evaluate outputs, and decide where people stay in control. Every project leaves behind agent systems, evals, and tools that make the next one faster. The engineers we put in front of clients are the product, so hiring is the most important decision we make each week. Our engineers have worked at Google, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, AWS, DoorDash, Coinbase, and Oracle, and many have founded companies.

Our Work

- Sales intelligence for a sports and entertainment company. Models score 4.1M fans every night, and an LLM explains each score for sales reps. Top-ranked fans buy at 125x the rate of fans who are not called.
- Shelf and field intelligence for a beauty brand. Revenue forecasts for every shelf move, field staffing optimization, and AI checks of shelf photos. Fixing the retailer data feed alone recovered about $1M a week in sales.
- In-store computer vision for a retail analytics company. Vision models run on edge devices in each store. They count 98% of entries with zero false counts, and store no video or faces.
- AI legal review for true-story TV scripts at a global media company. Attorneys start from an AI first pass that flags defamation, false light, and privacy risks. A review that took about 7 hours now takes about 1.

## How We Pay

Most pay models were built before AI changed how fast engineers can work. Ours wasn’t: you get a base salary plus an uncapped quarterly bonus based on the work you ship, so the more you do with AI, the more you earn. Last quarter, every full-quarter engineer beat their baseline. OTE $224K-$394K • Offers Equity • Offers Bonus • 55/45 split

## How We Work

Tenex is intense by design. The pace is fast, and the standards are high. People share what they learn, challenge each other, and step in to help, so the bar is high and so is the support. This is probably not the right place if you want a narrow scope, a predictable pace, or distance from customers. It is built for engineers who want responsibility, hard problems, and a steep learning curve.

Our Vision We’re bootstrapped and profitable, and we reinvest what we earn into tools, research, and products of our own. Over time, that’s how we build a modern-day Bell Labs: a place where solving today’s problems gives us the means to tackle bigger ones.

## About Tenex

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Tenex is an AI transformation partner that helps enterprises shift from AI-absent to AI-native through outcome-based engineering squads and custom transformation programs.
- **Entity Type**: Private (services firm; no public funding rounds disclosed)
- **Headquarters**: New York City, New York, USA
- **Founded**: 2025
- **Founders**: Alex Lieberman (co-founder of Morning Brew) and Arman Hezarkhani (former Google Cloud AI leader and adjunct professor at Carnegie Mellon)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: AI transformation consulting and engineering services
- **Target customers**: B2B, primarily enterprise companies with >$25 million revenue that are motivated to become AI-first but lack internal resources
- **Mission**: “To help your business reach its potential & end up on the right side of history, post-AI.”

## Products & Services
- **Tenex Engineering**: Outcome‑based, subscription‑style product and engineering squads that leverage AI acceleration to ship production‑grade software faster. Clients pay for features delivered, not hours logged.
- **Tenex Transformation**: Custom partnerships combining bespoke change management, AI tooling, and baseline metrics to drive measurable ROI. Includes holistic audits, strategy execution, and upskilling.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly available (private firm)
- **Key Metric**: No annual revenue disclosed; total funding not applicable (bootstrapped or internally funded)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Founders have deep networks (Alex Lieberman – Morning Brew; Arman Hezarkhani – Google Cloud, multiple venture-backed AI companies). No external investors listed.
- **Growth Signals**: Founded in 2025 and already hiring aggressively for 17+ roles (per Built In); salary ranges up to $600K for engineers signal high-value client engagements and rapid scaling.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Outcome-based pricing**: Clients pay for delivered features, not hours – aligns incentives with speed and quality.
- **NYC-based 10x engineers**: Positions itself as the opposite of offshore dev shops, using top-tier local talent.
- **No‑fluff approach**: Skips long strategy decks and diagnostics; focuses immediately on business impact and implementation.
- **Founder credibility**: Alex Lieberman built Morning Brew to a $75M exit; Arman Hezarkhani scaled Google Cloud AI platforms.

## Strategic Focus
- Help enterprises become AI‑native by executing AI strategy at “startup speed.”
- Build repeatable AI‑driven solutions that integrate with existing systems, processes, and people.
- Expand through a “Bring Your Own Pod” model and forward‑deployed engineering teams embedded with clients.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: “Come make history” – high‑ownership, fast‑paced environment with world‑class builders. Emphasis on being part of a consequential AI institution.
- **Remote/Hybrid/Office**: Fully on‑site in New York City (per Built In and careers page).
- **Compensation**: Engineering roles range from $240K–$600K base + bonus; strategist roles $190K–$250K + bonus.
- **Unique perk**: “Bring Your Own Pod” – employees can build their own team or join existing squads.
- **Engineering culture**: Forward‑deployed model similar to Palantir; engineers work directly with clients to ship production software.

## Sources
1. [tenex.co](https://www.tenex.co/)
2. [tenex.co/careers](https://www.tenex.co/careers)
3. [tenex.co/about-us](https://www.tenex.co/about-us)
4. [builtin.com/company/tenex-tenexco](https://builtin.com/company/tenex-tenexco)

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