AI Acquisition

AI Systems Engineer - Forward-Deployed Builder

United States

Sponsorship not specified$12k-$22kDetected 31 days ago

JavaScriptTypeScriptPythonData EngineeringLLMsAgentic AICold OutreachLogisticsSystems Engineering

About the role

(This role plugs into our highest-need seat - product/app, sales-ops, or CS-ops systems.) In one line: We hand you a messy, ambiguous, high-stakes problem - and you come back with a working, tested system.
You think about the business and the user, not just the code.
We move fast, ship constantly, and we give builders the keys.

We start as a paid engagement because the best builders we hire run their own things, and we respect that - it grows into whatever's right for both of us (bigger scope, a real stake in what you own).
Anywhere with enough timezone overlap to actually collaborate with the team day-to-day.
a side-project, your own product, an agent/automation - or something you initiated and pushed through at a job (we respect confidentiality; redact or whiteboard it).
"If you had to rebuild an AI app builder - pick one: rork.com, Lovable, or Base44 - from scratch in 7 days, how would you attack it?" Hit the architecture, where you'd use agents vs. code, what you'd build vs. reuse, what you'd cut, and your honest weakest point. (Some of this is intentionally underspecified - make calls and state your assumptions.)
If it's a fit, you'll do one live session - expect us to be direct, to change a requirement on you mid-conversation, to have you build something small live, and to push hard on your thinking. (If you're running your own thing and a recorded video isn't your style, tell the recruiter - we'll do a live equivalent or jump to a short paid build instead.)
For the genuine article this lands around $12k-$22k/month (paid monthly, paid on time, no games), with real upside on what you own.
If you can only build exactly what you're told and can't reframe the problem, this isn't it.
This is a hands-on building role - the person who makes the machine actually work.

You can take a punch and throw one.
You can hang in a room with direct Americans, dry British roasting, and EU bluntness without getting precious.
You can name what you started using in the last two weeks and why.
Experience in the info-product, agency, or DTC/GTM world - you understand funnels, offers, paid ads, cold outreach, CRO, or how an agency actually makes money.

Reason commercially - figure out why a funnel, campaign, or product isn't working from first principles, and fix the real cause, not the symptom.
This is not static work.
Who you are You're obsessive in the healthy way.
When you get into something you go all the way down - best resources, deepest forums, you can't help it.
You ship absurdly fast.
You've turned around things in a day or a weekend that other people quote in months.
You're an agentic-engineering native.
You see the whole board.

No budget cap for tokens and no babysitting.
People who join us tell us they learn more in months than they did in years elsewhere.
Frontier work, not maintenance.
Agentic systems, internal platforms, GTM automation, net-new products.
Autonomy and ownership.
Drop-a-brief-get-it-built.
Top-of-market pay, paid properly and paid on time.
Speed, output, and quality matter more than process theater.

A strong USD monthly rate goes a long way - we pay for the talent tier, not the postal code.

Why this is one of the best seats in AI right now We're a fast-moving AI company building multiple products at once - an AI app builder, ad-creation tooling, cold-outreach/GTM systems, and an internal operations platform that runs the whole business.

This listing is sourced directly from AI Acquisition's careers page and normalized into a canonical job model.