--- title: 'Staff Forward Deployed Engineer at Gradial' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/staff-forward-deployed-engineer-gradial-seattle-0q04ddr8vswq' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-10-30' --- # Staff Forward Deployed Engineer at Gradial - **Company:** Gradial - **Location:** Seattle, WA - **Posted:** 2026-10-28 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-30 - **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/gradial/jobs/4471805009 ## Job description Gradial is building the AI-native system of work for enterprise marketing. Our agents turn ideas into live campaigns by executing across the tools, teams, and workflows enterprises already use—from content authoring and campaign assembly to quality assurance and brand compliance. We give marketers and creatives more time to shape brands, understand customers, and create work that moves people. We’re tackling some of the hardest problems in applied AI: building agent harnesses, sandboxed execution environments, and orchestration that enable agents to plan, act, and verify their work reliably at enterprise scale. We’re growing rapidly, winning Fortune 500 and enterprise customers including AWS, T-Mobile, and Prudential. Our $65 million Series C led by Insight Partners is accelerating that momentum. Join us to help define how people and AI agents work together. We move with urgency, reason from first principles, and take ownership from idea to customer impact. You’ll shape the product, own consequential problems, and build systems that some of the world’s leading brands depend on every day. ## The Role We’re hiring a Staff Forward Deployed Engineer to lead implementations of our AI platform directly with customers. This role is ideal for an experienced technically fluent builder who thrives at the intersection of engineering and problem solving; someone who wants to be hands-on with code while shaping how some of the world’s most recognizable brands modernize their content operations. As a Staff FDE, you’ll own full-stack development for enterprise deployments, working side-by-side with customers to map complex workflows into scalable generative systems. You’ll move between discovery, prototyping, implementation, and post-launch optimization - translating real-world pain points into elegant technical solutions. ## What You'll Own - Lead technical discovery and implementation for new enterprise customers, translating nuanced business processes into robust AI-native solutions. - Build, deploy and optimize features that integrate customer systems with Gradial’s LLM driven platform. - Develop reusable tools, adapters and configuration layers to support scalable enterprise onboarding. - Collaborate with customer stakeholders (mainly within marketing, operations and engineering) to define requirements, surface edge cases and iterate in real time. - Work closely with Gradial’s product and engineer teams to incorporate learnings from the field into our core roadmap. - Contribute to internal technical documentation and implementation playbooks that accelerate future deployments. - Own performance, reliability and maintainability for the solutions you ship, from backend architecture to customer UX. ## What We're Looking For - 8+ years of software engineering or technical implementation experience, ideally in customer-facing contexts. - Experienced in programming languages such as TypeScript or similar, with a strong understanding of APIs and systems integration. - Ability to rapidly understand unfamiliar enterprise software architectures (CMS, DAM, workflow tools) and build integration paths. - Excellent communication skills. Confident translating for both technical and non-technical stakeholders. - High ownership mindset with comfort operating independently, navigating ambiguity. - Demonstrated experience working with enterprise customers; particularly in content, marketing or digital operations. - Experience with LLMs, generative AI pipelines and agent-style automation frameworks. - Willingness to travel occasionally (<10%) for customer discovery, deployment and relationship building. ## Compensation The salary range for this position is $155,000 – $225,000 annually. Final compensation will be determined based on factors such as experience, skills, and qualifications. In addition to base salary, this role may be eligible for performance-based bonuses and equity awards. Gradial offers a comprehensive benefits package, including medical, dental & vision insurance, 401K retirement plan, paid time off, paid sick leave and other employee wellness programs. ## What we offer - Performance-based annual bonus - Meaningful equity awards - Medical, dental & vision (fully covered for employees with 75% for dependents) - Fertility & family-planning support - 401k plan - Unlimited PTO - A beautiful Seattle office with a gym, sauna, and bike parking - Free lunch three days a week in our HQ - A front-row seat to building category-defining AI infrastructure You'll thrive here if you - Learn quickly, actively seek out new challenges, and regularly reconsider “how it’s always been done.” - Want to have real impact with zero bureaucracy. - Have an innate drive for being 1% better than the day before, building towards greatness. - Embrace AI as a core tool for problem-solving, innovation, and scale. - Show customer-obsession (internal or external), high ownership/accountability, and bias for action. - Communicate clearly, directly, with curiosity, and assuming good intentions. - Thrive in fast-paced, hyper-growth environments where building better > maintaining status quo. AI Literacy & Interviewing Tools As an AI-first company, we prioritize AI literacy as a core competency in our hiring decisions. We’re excited by candidates who thoughtfully apply AI tools in their work, but during interviews we’re focused on you. This is your opportunity to show how you think, communicate, and solve problems. Over-reliance on AI-generated responses during the interview process (especially when it obscures your own voice) will result in disqualification. We want to understand your unique perspective and how you approach challenges, both with and without AI. Gradial is dedicated to creating an environment where diverse perspectives are valued and all team members can grow. We offer competitive compensation, equity, flexible work hours, comprehensive benefits, and a collaborative culture focused on learning and impact. ## About Gradial ## Company Overview - **One-liner**: Gradial provides an agentic marketing operations platform that automates campaign execution, content assembly, and brand governance for large enterprises. - **Entity Type**: Private (Series C, last funding $65M) - **Headquarters**: Seattle, Washington, United States - **Founded**: 2023 - **Founders**: Not publicly available ## Core Business - **Primary industry**: Enterprise marketing technology (MarTech) - **Target customers**: Large enterprises (B2B, B2C) – examples include T-Mobile, AWS, Prudential, Avalara - **Mission/purpose**: “Enable marketing at the speed of thought” – turning fragmented marketing execution into a governed operating system so enterprise teams can move from strategy to live work with speed, visibility, and control. ## Products & Services - **Gradial Platform**: An agentic operating system for marketing operations. Agents handle authoring, QA, tagging, assembly, and execution of campaigns (landing pages, PDPs, emails, etc.). Includes built-in brand compliance, accessibility checks, and governance. Supports personalization at scale and optimization. ## Market Standing - **Valuation**: Not publicly available - **Key Metric**: Latest funding round – $65M Series C (raised in 2026). Prior total funding reported as $53.4M (likely including earlier rounds). - **Notable Investors**: Madrona Venture Group, PruVen Capital, VMG Partners, Insight Partners, General Advance, and six others. - **Growth Signals**: Strong enterprise customer logos (T-Mobile, AWS, Prudential, Avalara); 24 open job postings across Engineering, Product, Revenue, and Delivery teams; named a leader in a competitive landscape including Braze, Zeta Global, and Jasper. ## Competitive Advantages - **Agentic execution layer** that automates high-volume, high-risk marketing work without requiring a full stack rebuild. - **Governance-first design** – brand compliance and accessibility checks run automatically on every execution. - **Trusted by top-tier enterprises** – AWS uses it as a “control tower”; T-Mobile modernized campaign launches; Prudential enables personalization at scale. - **Speed and scalability** – teams increase throughput without adding headcount. ## Strategic Focus - Scale adoption among large enterprises by deepening integrations and expanding agent capabilities for performance marketing, content updates, and asset management. - Continue building the “system of work” that makes marketing execution faster, cleaner, and more governable. ## Why Work Here - **Culture values**: Pragmatic AI, care for craft (quality and intentionality), end-to-end ownership, clarity under pressure, execution first, and systems that compound. - **Work model**: Hybrid (Seattle office at 2505 2nd Avenue) and remote roles available across the US. Many engineering roles are Seattle-based; some Forward Deployed and Sales roles are remote. - **Engineering culture**: Building “frontier systems for enterprise execution” – emphasis on product craft, applied AI, and solving complex workflow problems at scale. - **Team structure**: Small-but-growing company – 24 open roles span Applied AI, Platform, Infrastructure, Forward Deployed, and Product Design. Opportunity for high ownership and impact. - **Notable perks**: Not explicitly listed, but the focus on “clarity under pressure” and “compounding systems” suggests a structured, high-autonomy environment. ## Sources 1. [Gradial Website](https://www.gradial.com/) 2. [Gradial About Page](https://www.gradial.com/about) 3. [CBInsights Company Profile](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/gradial) 4. [Gradial Greenhouse Job Board](https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/gradial/jobs/4260900009) ## Other roles at Gradial - [Forward Deployed Analyst](https://feeny.ai/job/forward-deployed-analyst-gradial-new-york-7fsdb5v5bqpm) — New York, NY / San Francisco, CA / Seattle, WA - [Product Marketing Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/product-marketing-manager-gradial-seattle-mx3ejnchxaaj) — Seattle, WA - [Software Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-gradial-seattle-tjdn20hehm08) — Seattle, WA - [Staff Security Engineer, Product & Platform](https://feeny.ai/job/staff-security-engineer-product-platform-gradial-seattle-mn5z3krm021j) — Seattle, WA - [Staff Security Engineer, AI](https://feeny.ai/job/staff-security-engineer-ai-gradial-seattle-21rfrcf56w06) — Seattle, WA - [Staff Software Engineer, Platform](https://feeny.ai/job/staff-software-engineer-platform-gradial-seattle-yn3df2t5zxgj) — Seattle, WA - [Staff Software Engineer, Backend](https://feeny.ai/job/staff-software-engineer-backend-gradial-seattle-yphmnebkzqcx) — Seattle, WA - [Senior Demand Generation Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-demand-generation-manager-gradial-seattle-7ha2sne2w5rz) — Seattle, WA - [Pre-Sales Solutions Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/pre-sales-solutions-lead-gradial-seattle-2fvkk3y7tap1) — Seattle, WA - [Senior Forward Deployed Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-forward-deployed-engineer-gradial-seattle-m5b8whja0wkh) — Seattle, WA