---
title: 'Lead Forward Deployed Engineer, Hospitality at UP.Labs'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/lead-forward-deployed-engineer-hospitality-up-labs-remote-q26zpzbnxyw3'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-12'
---

# Lead Forward Deployed Engineer, Hospitality at UP.Labs

- **Company:** UP.Labs
- **Location:** Remote
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** remote
- **Posted:** 2026-08-12
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-12
- **Apply:** https://jobs.gem.com/up-labs/am9icG9zdDoxEe1y5_jdSLu5lDN2OnQB

## Job description

telostravel.ai

Lead Forward Deployed Engineer, Hospitality Remote (US or Canada) · Hybrid/Remote · Reports to the Chief Operating Officer

## About telos

telos is an AI revenue decision platform: a decision-infrastructure layer that sits between systems of record (PMS, CRS, RMS, distribution) and the people making high-yield commercial decisions on pricing, inventory, mix, and merchandising. We amplify the judgment of revenue teams by surfacing more good decisions than any team has time to find on its own. Our airline business is live in production with major carriers, and we are now building the equivalent capability for hospitality. This role delivers it, hotel by hotel and brand by brand.

## The Role

Forward deployed engineers at telos ship working AI inside client environments. As Lead Forward Deployed Engineer, you sit at the intersection of hotel revenue management practice and applied AI engineering. You embed with hotel commercial teams, own end-to-end delivery on their real data and real systems and stay until revenue managers trust the output enough to act on it. The hard part of AI in hospitality is not the model. It is the workflow around it: whether revenue managers trust the system, whether it fits how commercial decisions get made, and whether it holds up under the operational pressure of running a hotel portfolio. You have lived that pressure, from the engineering side, the commercial side, or ideally both, and you know how to build for it. You start as a senior individual contributor with full ownership of client deployments and grow into building the forward deployed engineering team as the hospitality business scales.

## What You'll Do

- Own client deployments end to end: scope the engagement, integrate with the client’s PMS, CRS, RMS, and distribution stack, ship the models, and drive adoption inside the revenue organization.
- Design and ship agentic workflows that revenue managers actually adopt rather than second-guess.
- Translate deep hotel revenue management practice into decision logic, validating that agent recommendations match the judgment of seasoned revenue managers and directors.
- Work on-site and remotely with client product, engineering, and commercial leadership to integrate cleanly with hotel systems of record and distribution.
- Define the methodology and metrics standards each deployment is held to, ensuring rigor in how performance is framed and measured.
- Represent telos credibly with brand-level revenue and commercial leaders, the EVPs and heads of revenue who buy and rely on this work.
- Build, mentor, and lead the forward deployed engineering team as the function scales.

## Who You Are

You combine hands-on technical delivery with real commercial domain depth. Strong candidates come from one of two paths, and the best come from both:

- Engineering side: a senior technical leader with production experience building and deploying machine learning, forecasting, optimization, and agentic AI, ideally in client-facing or embedded delivery roles.
- Commercial side: experience as a revenue analyst, revenue manager, or revenue director at a large hotel brand, owning real pricing and inventory decisions across multi-property portfolios.

Required: Hotel Systems Fluency Demonstrated, hands-on familiarity with the systems hotel revenue teams actually run on, such as:

- Revenue management systems (RMS): IDeaS, Duetto, Revenue Analytics, or equivalent, deployed in production at scale.
- Property management systems (PMS): Oracle OPERA or equivalent.
- Central reservation systems (CRS): Amadeus ACRS, Sabre SynXis, or equivalent.
- BI and rate-shopping tools: Lighthouse, STR, Kalibri, Amadeus BI, or equivalent.
- Full command of the hotel revenue management metric set and the methodological distinctions that matter

Required: Technical and Delivery

- Deep lived experience across hotel system engineering or hotel revenue management roles (not back-office IT), pairing senior leadership with hands-on execution.
- Practical experience with major hotel industry APIs such as Oracle Hospitality Integration Platform (OHIP), OpenTravel Alliance (OTA) specs, and Hospitality Technology Next Generation (HTNG) specs.
- Production experience with SQL, Python and modern ML and optimization tooling; comfort across cloud AI services (AWS, Azure, GCP).
- Track record of shipping AI that fits real commercial workflows and earns analyst trust under operational pressure.
- Strong communicator able to move fluently between revenue teams, engineers, and brand-level executives, with a practitioner’s credibility in the room.

Desired

- Experience with agentic AI, RAG, Model Context Protocol (MCP), and Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) architectures.
- Depth in distribution and channel strategy: OTA and wholesale contracting, channel mix and drift, direct-booking optimization.
- Experience with customer insights, loyalty, and segmentation analytics.
- A revenue management certification (e.g., CRME) and continuing industry leadership presence.

## Equal Opportunity

telos is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. telos complies with all applicable pay-transparency requirements; where required by law, the relevant pay range will be provided during the application process.

## About UP.Labs

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: UP.Labs is a venture builder that partners with leading enterprises like Porsche, Alaska Airlines, and J.B. Hunt to co-create vertical AI startups that solve complex operational challenges in physical industries.
- **Entity Type**: Private (venture builder/venture lab)
- **Headquarters**: Santa Monica, California, USA (Hangar 7, 3100 Donald Douglas Loop N, Santa Monica, CA 90405)
- **Founded**: Not publicly disclosed, but has been active since at least 2024
- **Founders**: Not publicly disclosed as a single founder; the entity operates as a venture lab under the UP.Partners umbrella

## Core Business
- Primary industry: Venture building / Corporate venture foundry, focused on transportation, mobility, logistics, aviation, manufacturing, and energy
- Target customers: Large enterprises in physical industries (e.g., Porsche, Alaska Airlines, J.B. Hunt, Wabash National)
- Mission: To transform physical industry by building vertical AI startups that unlock massive operational gains and deliver real enterprise value — described as "the shortest road to a faster, cleaner, safer, and more accessible future"

## Products & Services
UP.Labs does not sell a single product; instead, it launches and incubates startups. Recent and notable portfolio ventures include:

- **AutoUnify**: A developer platform aiming to solve the automotive industry data divide (launched with Porsche, described as "the Plaid of automotive retail") [techcrunch.com](https://techcrunch.com/2025/05/13/up-labs-porsches-newest-startup-wants-to-be-the-plaid-of-automotive-retail/)
- **Odysee**: An AI-enabled startup focused on schedule optimization for airlines (launched with Alaska Airlines) [talkbusiness.net](https://talkbusiness.net/2024/11/04/leaders-highlight-programs-to-help-startups-boost-innovation/)
- **Stealth AI Manufacturing Planning Startup**: Currently being built with Wabash National to modernize transportation manufacturing with AI-powered tools [morningstar.com](https://www.morningstar.com/news/globe-newswire/202504221000/wabash-and-up-labs-to-modernize-transportation-manufacturing-with-ai-powered-tools)
- **Stealth AI Freight Operations Startup**: Being built with J.B. Hunt to create logistics startups [talkbusiness.net](https://talkbusiness.net/2024/11/04/leaders-highlight-programs-to-help-startups-boost-innovation/)
- **Stealth AI Industrial Commerce Startup**: Currently in development

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed (private entity)
- **Key Metric**: 72 employees as of mid-2025, with 27% year-over-year headcount growth [linkedin.com](https://linkedin.com/company/up-labs)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Porsche, Alaska Airlines, J.B. Hunt, Wabash National (corporate partners); operates with UP.Ventures as the capital arm
- **Growth Signals**: 
  - 27% YoY headcount growth (+20 people)
  - 2.5% monthly LinkedIn follower growth, 31.8% yearly
  - Active job postings up 200% monthly and 350% quarterly
  - 8 industry-specific venture labs operating across Los Angeles and Silicon Valley
  - Workforce distributed across 9 countries (US, Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Uruguay, Spain, Philippines, UK, Chile)

## Competitive Advantages
- **Unique venture model**: UP.Labs doesn't just invest — it co-creates startups with enterprise partners who are also the first customers, ensuring immediate market fit and a built-in acquisition path
- **Enterprise access**: Partners like Porsche, Alaska Airlines, and J.B. Hunt provide real-world operational problems, data, and distribution channels
- **Vertical AI focus**: Purpose-built AI solutions for physical industries (logistics, manufacturing, aviation, energy) — a space with high barriers to entry and massive operational impact
- **Talent density**: Attracts proven entrepreneurs, product leaders, and technologists; alumni go to top firms like McKinsey, BCG, Amazon, and Stanford GSB
- **Proven exit model**: Corporate partners acquire matured startups, creating a clear liquidity path

## Strategic Focus
- **Scale the venture lab model**: Expanding from 8 labs across two hubs (LA and Silicon Valley) into more industries and geographies
- **Deepen enterprise partnerships**: Working with the world's leading organizations to compound innovation
- **Build vertical AI startups**: Focus on agentic AI, computer vision, and data intelligence for physical operations
- **Global talent expansion**: Active hiring across LATAM (Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Uruguay) for senior engineering roles, with a focus on building remote-first teams
- **Recent hires**: Appointed elite founders to lead the next wave of enterprise AI startups (announced August 2025) [morningstar.com](https://www.morningstar.com/news/globe-newswire/202508211000/meet-the-builders-up-labs-appoints-elite-founders-to-lead-its-next-wave-of-enterprise-ai-startups)

## Why Work Here
- **Impact at scale**: Engineers work on AI-native startups solving real problems in logistics, aviation, manufacturing, and energy — not just chatbots or CRUD apps
- **Remote-first culture**: Many roles are fully remote, especially for LATAM-based engineers (no relocation required)
- **Global, distributed team**: Workforce spans 9 countries; strong presence in LATAM (Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Uruguay) with dedicated LATAM remote roles
- **Senior-level focus**: Roles are described as "not support roles" but the technical layer behind AI-native companies; 100% retention reported for the initial remote LATAM team [linkedin.com](https://linkedin.com/company/up-labs)
- **Compensation**: USD-denominated salaries for LATAM roles, plus paid time off, hardware setup, and career development paths
- **Engineering culture**: Emphasis on "the best engineering problems in the US right now are inside physical industries" — appeals to builders who want hard technical challenges
- **Hybrid options**: Some roles in Santa Monica (HQ) offer hybrid flexibility; roles like Portfolio Platform Lead and Head of Engineering are hybrid in LA
- **Growth trajectory**: 27% YoY headcount growth, active hiring across engineering, data science, AI/ML, and business roles

## Sources
1. [uplabs.com](https://uplabs.com/subscribe)
2. [jobs.gem.com/up-labs](https://jobs.gem.com/up-labs)
3. [linkedin.com/company/up-labs](https://linkedin.com/company/up-labs)
4. [careers.up.partners](https://careers.up.partners/jobs/up-labs?jobTypes=Engineer)
5. [techcrunch.com](https://techcrunch.com/2025/05/13/up-labs-porsches-newest-startup-wants-to-be-the-plaid-of-automotive-retail/)
6. [talkbusiness.net](https://talkbusiness.net/2024/11/04/leaders-highlight-programs-to-help-startups-boost-innovation/)
7. [morningstar.com](https://www.morningstar.com/news/globe-newswire/202508211000/meet-the-builders-up-labs-appoints-elite-founders-to-lead-its-next-wave-of-enterprise-ai-startups)
8. [morningstar.com](https://www.morningstar.com/news/globe-newswire/202504221000/wabash-and-up-labs-to-modernize-transportation-manufacturing-with-ai-powered-tools)

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