Summary
About this role
Forward Deployed Engineer
We are seeking high-performing NYC-based engineers of any level to help us solve more of our customers’ problems. We are looking for folks who are excited about designing elegant technical solutions and shipping great code frequently. If you are looking for a fresh challenge at a fast-growing AI startup - we would love to hear from you!
The Opportunity
The perfect foundation to build great software: Heron is at the forefront of automating workflows using the latest advances in AI and LLMs. Our product is embedded in business-critical processes - we help >100 financial services companies automate the document analysis work needed to serve their customers. You’ll have the platform to build some really interesting software and help us continue to push the boundaries of what is possible in production with AI.
High impact, high growth: the nature of our product means it is highly impactful - we’re embedded in customer processes, not a ‘nice to have’ tool off to the side. And, you’ll have your hands on our product every day! So, you will be making an impact on our customers and business every day. What’s more - we’re growing quickly, and will increasingly have a large number of interesting technical problems to solve.
An environment where you can do your best work: it’s a cliché, but we truly believe it. Underpinning our rapid growth is a lean, scrappy and committed team. We get our hands dirty, move quickly, and aspire to go above and beyond for our customers. We have a very flat structure where you’ll work directly with our founders and other leaders in the company every day. Sound fun? Then Heron might be for you!
What We’re Looking For
Our ideal hire will:
Enjoy -actually- building and making an impact: you get a kick out of shipping code frequently, iteratively, and collaboratively. You value MVPs and customer impact over perfectly engineered systems. You can take responsibility over the end-to-end deployment of what you build.
Want to understand customer problems first hand: you’re not content sitting in an office and theorizing about a problem. You enjoy seeing and breaking down customer problems in-person, which may include traveling to see customers all across the US (and sometimes internationally!)
Thrive at solving tough technical problems: you enjoy breaking down challenges into simple and well-designed solutions. You are fact-oriented and thoughtful in your approach, but you don’t get bogged down in over-intellectualizing or over-complicating things.
Scale-oriented: while having a bias to action and impact, you will care about scalable infrastructure and engineering processes. Even better if you’re able to bring some better practices or improvements to our infrastructure or ways of working!
Be able to contribute in our stack: we try to balance speed and impact with fitting the best framework/ technology to the task at hand. Currently, we work primarily in Python / Flask / FastAPI on the backend, Terraform / GCP / AWS for infra, and React / JavaScript / TypeScript / Vercel on the frontend. Ideally, you’ll be able to contribute within our stack while also helping us experiment and evolve to continually improve functionality and performance.
Above all else, we value people who want to make an impact in their work. Here are some of the behaviors that we expect of all Herons:
Scrappy and creative: when faced with an obstacle, you will either overcome it by pure determination (i.e., by hand), or find an unconventional approach or ‘hack’ to navigate it.
Persistent: you may not always find the right answer or person immediately, but you're motivated to keep on trying until you do so. You’ll go the extra mile - including Flying to Gainesville - if that’s what it takes.
Pilot not passenger: at a fast-growing company like Heron we need people who jump on opportunities unprompted and drive them to a great outcome, rather than folks who wait to be told what to do.
Excited to work in a fast-paced, high-growth, team-based environment: we aim to move quickly and decisively, but together. You’ll be a great team player and do what it takes for the team to succeed.
What You Can Expect as a Heron
Competitive compensation, including equity
Based full-time, and in-person in our NYC office, with occasional travel to customers (across the country) and company retreats (often in London)
Your choice of top-of-the-line equipment to fit out your desk in our office
Competitive benefits package: health, dental, vision with partial coverage for dependents; 401K; uncapped PTO; parental leave
Free mental health support via Spill - on-demand access to therapy
Weekly company lunches (always inclusive and vegan-friendly - especially if you like Vietnamese food!)
Applicants from any background and gender are welcome and we have a zero tolerance policy on discrimination
About the interview
1-2 Initial screens (20 minutes) - conversation to discuss what you're looking for, what Heron offers, and to see if there's a good fit.
Technical screening interview (up to 60 minutes) - interactive technical session with one or two of our engineers where you will review a pull request and then do some live coding to build on it.
Team interviews (2-3 hours in total) - mix of technical and behavioral conversations with Heron teammates and founders. You'll get a feel for the people you'll work with and how we approach problems, and we'll get to know how you collaborate, communicate, and think.
References - 2 references from people you've worked with who can speak to your impact, working style, and contributions in a professional setting.
Other facts
About Heron Data
About
We are Heron Data , a Series A stage company based in New York and London. At Heron, we use the latest advances in AI and LLMs to automate document processing. Our software handles emails, analyzes attachments, and takes actions like updating CRMs or requesting more info to execute workflows end-to-end for our customers. We serve a range of businesses including some of the world's largest fintechs, banks and other specialty finance companies, commercial insurers, and more. Our largest product automates underwriting for small business lenders and other specialty finance companies. We eliminate cumbersome manual processes and enable our customers to provide their services with much greater speed, precision, and fairness. We are a rapidly growing company with over 150 customers in financial services and beyond who trust us to be embedded in critical processes - without us, their businesses stop. We analyze tens of thousands of documents a day, including over 20 million individual bank transactions daily for our customers. We continue to grow into more segments and workflows: further into lending, banking, insurance. And we think there's much more we can do! We are a lean, scrappy and committed team with a flat structure and collaborative culture. Our team brings together a wealth of experience from great tech companies including Facebook, Spotify, Revolut and many other startups from around the world. With team members from five different continents, we embrace multiculturalism and diversity. From company events to everyday interactions, we make sure everyone feels welcome and accommodate all cultural and dietary requirements. Since our launch in September 2020, at the end of the S20 batch, we've experienced a lot of growth! Today, we serve over 150 customers and have over $7M in ARR. Read more about our mission here
Tech For Frontend --
our customer dashboard is built with NextJS, using MUI, React, and TypeScript. We deploy our frontend apps on Vercel
For Backend --
our backend applications are primarily written in Python using the Flask or FastAPI frameworks. We also use celery for async task processing. We have both a main monolith and also microservices. We containerize & deploy these applications on Kubernetes clusters or on managed compute (serverless)
For ML —
we have a variety of classification & prediction tasks that we deploy different models for, ranging from classic ML models / NLP techniques to fine-tuned LLMs
For infrastructure —
we use both GCP and AWS for different components. Some of our main components include Postgres database, Redis and RabbitMQ. All of our code repositories live in GitHub and we use GitHub actions extensively for CI/CD
Employee benefits
What you'll do
- The Forward Deployed Engineer will design and implement technical solutions to solve customer problems, working closely with clients to understand their needs. They will also be responsible for the end-to-end deployment of software and contribute to the development of scalable infrastructure.
Ready to join Heron Data?
Take the next step in your career journey