Forward Deployed Engineer

Forward Deployed Engineer | Position Description

Aim: Own the end-to-end success of a portfolio of SME client engagements, embedding with each client across People, Data, Kelpie and Workflows so they get real business value from AI.

About Pebbly Beach AI
We are the trusted guide to the AI evolution for quality small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Our mission is to make sure small and medium-sized organisations also evolve to get real value out of AI. A business has to change to get value from AI: its strategy, governance, data, technology and people. A chat licence alone does not deliver that. We deliver the whole evolution as one accountable programme on Kelpie, our AI work platform. Kelpie brings the users, the client's data and AI together in one safe, learning environment. Kelpie becomes the single main business system for a SME.

We are an early-stage company. We have signed clients in Australia and New Zealand (ANZ), Europe and Latin America (LATAM), as well as the United States and the Middle East, and a team spread across the same regions. The pace is fast. You will both deliver for clients and help build the company: build the ship while sailing it.

The role
Forward deployed means you sit with the client inside their business, remotely and in person. You are their day-to-day Pebbly lead and the person accountable for the engagement working. You run the programme, guide and teach senior leaders, find the business problems worth solving, and design, build and refine production workflows in Kelpie alongside the people who use them day to day.

You will guide a portfolio of quality SMEs (manufacturers, fabricators, construction firms, logistics businesses and other non-tech enterprises of 2 to 400 people). Your Pebbly colleagues will be with you all the way, but much will depend on you at times.

This is a client-leadership and delivery role with a build component. You do not need a computer science degree or years of traditional software engineering. You do need to be hungry, curious about how businesses and AI systems work, comfortable getting hands-on, and able to learn fast. We will teach you our frameworks and AI engineering methods, and you will become among the strongest applied AI engineers in business.

What you will actually do
We deliver for our clients across four pillars in parallel:

• People. Run one-to-one leadership AI training and hands-on staff training in Kelpie so adoption sticks in daily work.

• Data. Map what data the client has, set single sources of truth and permissions, and drive the targeted cleanup that live workflows depend on.

• Kelpie. Onboard the client onto Kelpie, configure their workspace and data syncs, and drive daily adoption.

• Workflows (agents). Prioritise the business problems worth solving with the client, then design, build, pilot and refine production agents in Kelpie with your Pebbly colleagues and the client's team.

You will also run the programme rhythm: weekly standups, weekly written updates, monthly steering, clear minutes and return-on-investment (ROI) tracking. When you solve a problem well for one client, you package the pattern so the next client gets the benefit in a fraction of the time.

A realistic example: an Australian fabricator cut its first response on custom quote requests from a full working day to under twenty minutes using two quoting agents built in Kelpie, alongside leadership training and targeted data cleanup across its finance and workshop systems.

Who you are
We care about your drive over your qualifications. We are looking for team members who want to beat Google and OpenAI at guiding quality businesses to get real value out of AI for real work. Paper credentials, big-name logos and years on a CV matter far less to us than your effort, your will to succeed, good judgement, clear first-principles thinking and the drive to build an extraordinary organisation. Our team members include an environmental science major, ex-racing car driver, ex-pilot, a lover of classical literature, owner of a coffee trading business, ex-United Nations personnel.

What matters in day-to-day work:

• Clear thinking and plain writing. You can hold the point in one sentence and explain it to a sceptical, time-poor CEO.

• Bias to finishing. You own outcomes, work problems out from first principles and ship the result.

• Comfortable with people and with technical detail. You can teach a managing director one hour and sit with a workshop operator the next.

• Genuinely into AI. You experiment, keep up with how models behave, understand the power of looping, and turn AI capability into a practical change in how someone works.

• Organised under load. You run several client cadences cleanly and flag issues early.

Nice to have

• Second and third languages.

• Exposure to how real-world SMEs operate (manufacturing, construction, fabrication, logistics, trades or professional services).

• Familiarity with common SME software and data setups.

Location, travel and how we work

• Location: remote across Australia, New Zealand, UAE, Singapore, Vietnam, Hong Kong, India, UK, Europe and LATAM. Our clients and team sit across ANZ, Europe, the Middle East, Asia and LATAM. You work where you are most effective, with overlap to your clients and your Pebbly teammates.

• Some travel expected to meet teammates and clients in person.

• How we work. High autonomy, deep focus, tight feedback loops with real clients, and a team that has your back. This is not a nine-to-five corporate job. It is an early-stage startup: high ownership, steep learning, and the upside of building an AI-native business from the ground up.

Compensation
We pay a blend of fixed pay, performance bonus and equity:

• Fixed. A market base (experience dependent).

• Bonus. A performance bonus tied to client adoption, value delivered, retention and high-quality delivery.

• Equity. Possibility of an equity entitlement in Pebbly Beach AI, sharing directly in the upside of what we build together.

How to apply
Email careers@pebblybeach.ai with the subject line Forward Deployed Engineer.
Tell us, briefly:
1. Why this role.
2. A time you taught someone something hard.
3. Something you built or shipped that changed how people work.
Attach your CV and anything that shows how you think (a project, technical design, essay, or link to an application or agent you built).

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