Forward Deployed Engineer

Groundswell builds community power, cutting electricity bills for the neighbors who need savings most through community solar, resilience hubs, and home energy efficiency and repair. Gratava is its AI-enabled data platform: a neutral coordination layer where a household proves eligibility once and that verified record unlocks every program they qualify for.

The Forward Deployed Engineer sits with utility staff, program administrators, caseworkers and households to find what blocks adoption, then builds prototypes that prove the solution works, validates them with the customer, and hands them off to production engineering. Reports to the SVP, Data Platform, as a peer to the Tech Lead.

Responsibilities

• Field discovery on hard problems such as premise resolution, income verification, eligibility determination and program matching.
• Build new core functionality at prototype level (matching engine, rules-as-logic layer, AI agent layer) against real data, with production-quality code.
• Translate complex program requirements into reliable, testable, auditable logic.
• Validate prototypes with users and deliver a clean specification and path to production.
• Provide feasibility assessments and effort estimates for the roadmap.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's in CS, engineering or related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Ability to turn ambiguous, rules-heavy domain requirements into working logic.
• Two to four years building with modern AI tools (Claude, OpenAI, agentic development tools).
• Salesforce and Slack experience; energy, housing, healthcare or public benefits experience preferred.

Based in Washington, D.C., in office four days per month under Groundswell's hybrid plan. Apply by emailing a resume and cover letter to hiring@groundswell.org (see the posting).