---
title: 'Forward Deployed Validation Engineer, AI Infrastructure at Deploy Talent'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/forward-deployed-validation-engineer-ai-infrastructure-deploy-talent-new-york-mk7ygk1ew9f9'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-05'
---

# Forward Deployed Validation Engineer, AI Infrastructure at Deploy Talent

- **Company:** Deploy Talent
- **Location:** New York, NY
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-05-14
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-05
- **Apply:** https://jobs.gem.com/openreqstaffing/am9icG9zdDorL088iXerfbybPVlQ7VJS

## Job description

Who we are: Arena Physica is building electromagnetic superintelligence. Our name is inspired by Theodore Roosevelt's 'Citizenship in a Republic' speech. To us, entering the Arena means committing fully and accepting the risk of failure in pursuit of an audacious, worthy cause. We believe the future belongs to those brave enough to build it. Our team of 50 combines AI engineering and applied physics expertise with deep experience in enterprise deployments. We're headquartered in NYC with presences in San Francisco and Los Angeles, backed by $62M from Initialized, Founders Fund, Goldcrest Capital, Fifth Down Capital, and Shield Capital. If you're ready to do the most important work of your career, join us in the Arena Physica. What we do: Our AI platform Atlas operationalizes physics-grounded intelligence to verify, debug, and optimize hardware across its lifecycle. Atlas is already trusted globally by the world's most advanced hardware companies, including AMD, Anduril, Sivers Semiconductors, and Bausch & Lomb, for applications across R&D, integration testing, production assembly, and field repair. About the role: As a Forward Deployed Validation Engineer, you will be the domain expert who makes Atlas indispensable for our customers' datacenter and cluster validation workflows. You'll work at the intersection of deep technical expertise in system validation and cluster testing, customer engagement, and product development — using Atlas to solve real problems for hardware validation teams at leading companies while translating those workflows and insights back to our software and ML teams. Most validation engineers work inside discrete platforms, executing program by program. Here, your expertise will be the training signal that compounds Atlas’s intelligence for every customer. You'll own outcomes across the technical, product, and customer dimensions. If you've ever wanted your domain knowledge to scale beyond your direct work, this is how. A truly unique role! How you will contribute: Be the validation & performance expert - Execute datacenter validation and cluster performance testing across GPU/CPU/memory/BIOS/BMC/networking/storage subsystems; benchmark, profile, and optimize system and cluster performance; debug complex hardware/firmware/software interactions and drive root-cause analysis. Deploy Atlas with customers - Embed at customer sites to validate datacenter hardware using Atlas as your primary tool, augmenting with your own expertise where needed. Build credibility through technical depth and results. Codify and scale — Your value here isn’t just what you fix in the field — it’s what you teach Atlas. Establish validation methodologies for Atlas across common subsystems and testing phases (EVT, DVT, PVT). Alongside these, translate customer workflows and pain points into product requirements and work closely with our engineering team to encode that expertise into Atlas. Every deployment should compound value for Atlas more broadly. You have: Elite datacenter validation expertise - 4+ years with AI/ML datacenter infrastructure, GPU cluster validation, or large-scale hardware validation at leading hardware companies or cloud providers; you're the person that hardware teams call to debug complex system issues. Full-stack hardware debugging mastery - Deep understanding of GPU/CPU architecture, memory subsystems, BIOS/UEFI/BMC firmware, high-speed interconnects (PCIe/CXL/InfiniBand/RoCE), NVMe storage, and power/thermal management; experience validating systems from deployment through production at node and cluster scale; proven track record debugging issues across hardware, firmware, drivers, and software in distributed ML infrastructure. Performance optimization at scale - Strong experience benchmarking and tuning GPU clusters at multiple scales (cluster/rack/node); expertise with profiling tools, GPU utilization patterns, memory bandwidth bottlenecks, interconnect performance, and distributed training efficiency. Customer-facing technical leadership - You earn trust through technical credibility, understand workflows and pain points, communicate complex concepts clearly, and build strong relationships. Automation & software engineering skills - Proficiency in Python, Bash, or similar for building validation frameworks and automating tests at scale; comfortable with APIs, CI/CD environments, and collaborating with software engineers to productize workflows. Platform expertise - Experience with AMD and / or NVIDIA HW and Software stacks - EPYC CPUs, Instinct GPUs, ROCm software stack, or AMD networking technologies, and/or NVIDIA Grace CPUs, H100/B200/GB200 GPUs, CUDA/cuDNN/NCCL/TensorRT software stack and InfiniBand/NVLink networking technologies. Willingness to travel domestically and internationally (30-40% of your time) to deploy with customers and validate hardware in the field. Preferred: Work in person at Arena Physica’s NYC headquarters when not deployed. Benefits & Perks Include:

- 100% of the monthly premium for Aetna medical insurance, plus vision and dental coverage
- 401(k) Retirement Plan
- Unlimited PTO
- Lunch every day from local restaurants via Sharebite
- Relocation support provided The base salary range for this position is $150,000 - $250,000 yr. However, base pay offered may vary depending on job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. In addition to base salary, we also offer competitive equity and benefits packages. This position may require access to information protected under U.S. export control laws and regulations, including the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) and the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR). Please note that any offer for employment may be conditioned on authorization to receive software or technology controlled under these U.S. export control laws and regulations without sponsorship for an export license.

## About Deploy Talent

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Deploy Talent is a boutique executive search and technical recruiting firm that embeds with early-stage AI and deep tech companies to hire the people no one else can reach.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Bootstrapped)
- **Headquarters**: Newport Beach, California, United States (with offices in New York, San Francisco, and London)
- **Founded**: 2023 (originally launched as PLVCK, rebranded to Deploy in April 2025)
- **Founders**: Estephania (Steph) Stopani (CEO, Co-Founder) and Eric McLintock (COO, Co-Founder)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry/industries**: Executive Search Services, Technical Recruiting, Talent Acquisition
- **Target customers**: Pre-seed to Series B+ technology companies, particularly in AI, deep tech, and robotics; also works with venture capital firms who fund searches for their portfolio companies.
- **Mission or purpose statement**: “The recruiters founders actually call.” Deploy Talent positions itself as talent infrastructure for early-stage AI and deep tech, operating on a model where recruiters have personally hired at the level they recruit for.

## Products & Services
- **The Container Model**: A fixed monthly retainer that secures a defined block of recruiting capacity (typically 1–3 active roles at a time). Includes dedicated lead recruiter + sourcing support, weekly syncs with hiring managers, and the ability to flex roles within the engagement. On top of the retainer, a placement fee is paid per successful hire. Engagements are offered in 3, 6, or 12-month durations.
- **Embedded Recruiting**: Recruiters attend client standups, meet hiring managers weekly, see the roadmap, and adjust scope as priorities change without renegotiating fees.
- **Venture Fund Partnerships**: Deploy Talent works with lead investors who fund the Container retainer as part of their post-investment platform support, or with portfolio companies directly.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly available (privately held, bootstrapped).
- **Key Metric**: Total headcount of 13 employees; LinkedIn followers of 1,230 (monthly growth of +5.6%).
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: The firm is bootstrapped. Client/partner names are not fully disclosed, but the firm has placed talent at companies including Ocean Advisor, Genesis AI (a global physical AI lab), and Rovi Health.
- **Growth Signals**: Rebranded from PLVCK to Deploy in April 2025; operates four offices (Newport Beach HQ, New York, San Francisco, London); actively hiring with 1 open job posting as of the latest data; talent sources include Anthropic, Tenstorrent, Waymo, Applied Intuition, and Aquabyte.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Founder-led, boutique model**: Both co-founders are hands-on recruiters who have personally hired at the level they recruit for. The team is intentionally small (13 people) and senior (38% senior-level staff).
- **The Container model**: A retainer + placement fee structure that aligns incentives — the firm is paid for capacity and outcomes, not just activity. This is distinct from contingency or pure retained search.
- **Embedded approach**: Recruiters attend client standups and see the roadmap, allowing them to find candidates who fit not just a job description but the evolving needs of a startup.
- **Deep tech specialization**: Focused exclusively on early-stage AI, deep tech, and robotics companies, giving them a narrow but deep network in a high-demand market.
- **Alumni network**: Alumni have gone to Nominal, Aurora, and Hotplate, indicating a strong track record of placing talent into high-growth companies.

## Strategic Focus
- **Current priorities**: Scaling the Container model with more early-stage AI and deep tech clients; expanding their footprint in the US and UK (London office); building out their own team by hiring recruiters who can operate with the same embedded, senior-level approach.
- **Direction for growth**: Deploy Talent is actively hiring recruiters (as announced in September 2025) to keep up with demand from “some of the fastest growing, game-changing AI companies.” The firm is also deepening its partnerships with venture capital firms to fund placements for portfolio companies.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture highlights**: The team is described as “small” and “senior,” with every team member having been an early hire somewhere. The firm emphasizes that recruiters are embedded with founders by background, not by job description. The culture appears to be high-autonomy, high-trust, and founder-centric.
- **Remote/hybrid/office policy**: The open position (Commercial Litigation Attorney) is listed as “Hybrid,” suggesting a flexible work model. The firm has physical offices in New York, San Francisco, Newport Beach, and London.
- **Notable perks or engineering culture**: Deploy Talent’s own team is built from people who have worked at companies like Anthropic, Tenstorrent, Waymo, and Applied Intuition. The firm’s recruiting team is heavy on engineering and technical hiring (roles include Full-Stack & Backend Engineering, Technical Recruiting). The firm’s approach is designed to appeal to recruiters who want to work deeply with startup founders rather than operate as transactional headhunters.

## Sources
1. [deploytalent.com](https://deploytalent.com)
2. [deploytalent.com/team](https://deploytalent.com/team)
3. [deploytalent.com/approach](https://deploytalent.com/approach)
4. [deploytalent.com/work](https://deploytalent.com/work)
5. [deploytalent.com/contact](https://deploytalent.com/contact)
6. [linkedin.com/company/deploytalentco](https://linkedin.com/company/deploytalentco)

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