Forward Deployed Strategist / Engineer (AI)

## About the company We deploy powerful AI agents in complex, regulated industries, specializing in building the systems that enable autonomous agents to operate entire functions securely and reliably. Our belief is that people should be free of administrative and operational drudgery so they can create value through creativity, reasoning, and judgement. We're starting in higher education, a sector with ~$700B in expenses defined by heavy workflows across departments, such as admissions, financial aid, facilities, advising, student services, advancement, and more. Our agents are already embedded across these departments, interacting with millions of students and staff. They process applications, package aid, resolve verification issues, run large-scale communication workflows, handle student support tickets, and more. We believe that universities are among the most consequential institutions in the world, sitting at the foundation of social and economic progress. Improving how they operate improves who gets educated, who gets supported, and who gets a chance. When higher education runs better, everything built on top of it does too. ## About the role As a Forward Deployed Strategist at CollegeVine, you'll partner directly with our university customers to solve their biggest challenges using data, AI, and web technologies. You'll work in small, cross-functional teams, owning end-to-end delivery of high-stakes projects: from requirements gathering and architecture to code, deployment, and ongoing support. This role is ideal for someone who aspires to be both a technical leader and a strategic partner-think startup CTO meets solutions architect - with the opportunity to influence product direction and drive real outcomes for education institutions. ## Responsibilities - Rapidly understand complex customer workflows and pain points. - Translate domain needs into valuable technical solutions. - Own design, development, testing, and deployment of custom features and integrations. - Collaborate with product managers, designers, engineers, data scientists, and customer success to iterate quickly. - Leverage large‐scale datasets, LLMs, and AI agents to surface insights and automate workflows. - Build dashboards, APIs, or custom agents that drive measurable impact. - Occasional travel to client sites for discovery, workshops, training, and deployments. ## What We're Looking For ### Experience & Expertise - 3+ years of product management, startup strategy & operations, consulting, investment banking, or software engineering experience, ideally including roles that involved solution delivery and customer-facing projects. - Proven ability to own complex projects end-to-end in a fast-moving environment. ### Problem-Solving Mindset - Deeply analytical, with a knack for breaking down ambiguous challenges into concrete solutions. - Eagerness to learn new tools, frameworks, and re