Forward Deployed Engineer

About the role

Referral bonus: If you know someone exceptional feel free to connect us via LinkedIn (Dennis Agidigbi), if we end up hiring them for a full-time role, you'll receive 10,000€.

🌍 About Zauber

After co-founding and scaling Forto https://forto.com to over $600M in funding, I took a step back to reflect on what’s still broken in global logistics. The answer was clear: it’s still a human-first, spreadsheet-heavy industry, full of repetitive processes and broken system interoperability.

With the rise of AI agents, we now have the tools to rethink that from the ground up. Zauber builds autonomous agents for the global logistics industry, AI workers that handle operational tasks, talk to systems and humans alike, and get better every day.

🚢 We're already live with global logistics leaders in Europe and Asia

💰 Backed by P9 - one of Europe's top early-stage funds

📈 Growing fast and hiring exceptional engineers to join early

Now we are looking for an exceptional Forward Deployed Engineer https://a16z.com/services-led-growth/ to help us build with and for customers right in the field. Probably the hottest role in startups right now.

🧠 What You'll Do

You'll be the bridge between customer pain and product reality. You will:

• Sit with logistics teams, understand workflows, and turn chaos into clear system design

• Build fast, AI-powered tools across the stack (Node.js, TypeScript)

• Integrate with enterprise ecosystems (ERP, TMS, SFTP, event queues) and build solid pipelines for messy data

• Shape product direction and tech decisions with the founding team

• Travel with us to key accounts in Europe and Asia

👤 You Might Be a Fit If You...

• Thrive in early-stage environments and take full ownership of outcomes

• Write clean, fast code and love getting things into production

• Communicate clearly with both technical and non-technical stakeholders

• Are willing to work hard, to create something new and groundbreaking

• Enjoy traveling and working directly with customers

🛠 What You Bring

• Fluency in TypeScript/Node.js; frontend React is a plus

• Experience with APIs, external integrations, and enterprise data systems

• Ability to design and scale backend infrastructure

• Familiarity with cloud infra (Docker, Terraform, GCP or AWS)

• Bonus: experience working with GenAI/LLM architectures (RAG, evals, orchestration)

📍 Location & Logistics

• Berlin office preferred, but open for hybrid setups

• Annual offsite (last year we took the team for 4 weeks to San Francisco)

• Start: As soon as possible

💼 What We Offer

• Top-of-market compensation and meaningful early equity

• Direct exposure to customers and decision-making