JobsProject44

Senior Forward Deployed Engineer

Project44 · Chicago, IL · Engineering

Posted Aug 26, 2026 · We last checked this listing on Sep 20, 2026

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Likely interview questions for this role

Written from this job description, not a generic list. Each one notes what the interviewer is really checking.

Behavioral

Walk me through a time you were embedded directly with a customer to solve an integration problem. What was the setup and what did you actually own?

whether they've truly worked in a forward-deployed, customer-embedded capacity versus traditional back-office engineering

Tell me about a time an LSP customer pushed back on something because you didn't understand how their operation actually worked. What did you do next?

self-awareness and credibility-building with operators who are skeptical of engineers who don't speak their language

Describe a moment when something you saw in the field changed what your product team decided to build. How did you make that case?

whether they've actually influenced a roadmap from field observations, a core expectation of this role

Tell me about a time you had to explain something technically complex to a non-technical operator without dumbing it down so much that it stopped being useful.

ability to translate across audiences, which the posting explicitly names as a requirement

How do you personally use AI tools in your day-to-day engineering work right now?

whether they are already a genuine hands-on user of AI tooling, as the posting demands, versus paying lip service to it

Technical

Say you're setting up a bi-directional webhook so an agent can read and write data into a customer's TMS. Walk me through how you'd design that integration and what could break it.

depth of hands-on knowledge with API-first design and webhook architecture, not just familiarity with the term

Tell me about the most tangled TMS, WMS, or ERP integration you've worked on. What made it hard and how did you untangle the data model differences?

real hands-on integration experience across the specific system types this role touches daily

How would you design an event-driven pipeline using Kafka or PubSub to carry agent decisions at a scale of millions of logistics events a day?

whether they can actually architect for the throughput and reliability this role requires, not just name-drop tools

Explain freight procurement, load tendering, and exception handling to me as if I were a new engineer on your team with no logistics background.

genuine domain fluency in logistics versus surface-level familiarity picked up from a job description

How do you decide what context to feed an agent so it makes a good decision, and how do you know when you've given it too little or too much?

practical understanding of agent context engineering, not just theoretical knowledge of prompt engineering

Situational

An AI agent made a bad call in a live customer workflow — maybe it tendered a load to the wrong carrier. How would you trace that back to the root cause?

practical debugging methodology for agent-driven systems, since this is explicitly called out as a required skill

A customer wants a workflow customization that would take three months to build right, but they need something working in two weeks. What do you do?

judgment on scoping trade-offs and shipping fast without compromising the roadmap or the customer relationship

You're the only engineer on-site with a customer and something breaks in production during a pilot. Walk me through what you'd do in the first hour.

composure and ownership under pressure when there's no backup engineering team to lean on

Practice this interview out loud.

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The full job description

As published by Project44.

<div class="content-intro"><p>&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p></div><p><strong><span data-contrast="none"><span data-ccp-parastyle="heading 1">Why p44LSP.ai?</span></span><span data-ccp-props="{"335559738":240,"335559739":120}">&nbsp;</span></strong></p> <p><span data-contrast="auto">At project44, we believe in better — and p44LSP.ai is what better looks like for the&nbsp;logistics&nbsp;service provider market.</span><span data-ccp-props="{}">&nbsp;</span></p> <p><span data-contrast="auto">For years, project44 focused on global shippers as our core customer. That focus worked. Our Shipper business is a category leader growing 20% year-over-year. That strength is what makes the next chapter possible.</span><span data-ccp-props="{}">&nbsp;</span></p> <p><span data-contrast="auto">Shippers and LSPs are fundamentally different businesses. Shippers buy&nbsp;logistics&nbsp;software to support their core operations. Logistics Service Providers — freight forwarders, brokers, and 3PLs — sell&nbsp;logistics&nbsp;as their product. Their software is their competitive edge. They buy fast,&nbsp;build on&nbsp;APIs and agents, and reward teams that ship in weeks, not quarters.</span><span data-ccp-props="{}">&nbsp;</span></p> <p><span data-contrast="auto">This is why we created p44LSP.ai: a dedicated, AI-native division built to serve the LSP market with the focus, speed, and resources it deserves.&nbsp;It's&nbsp;the scope and ownership of an AI startup, backed by the infrastructure of a $124M business — 259K carriers, billions of shipment outcomes, agents in production, and direct access to project44's data graph, carrier network, and enterprise relationships.</span><span data-ccp-props="{}">&nbsp;</span></p> <p><span data-contrast="auto">This is a small, hand-picked team&nbsp;operating&nbsp;across Chicago, San Francisco,&nbsp;Bangalore, and the EU. Flat org. Forward-deployed engineering. AI coding tools across the workflow. Agents as the product surface. Customers who pilot in weeks and tell you what they think directly.</span><span data-ccp-props="{}">&nbsp;</span></p> <p><span data-contrast="auto">The LSP market is moving fast. AI agent startups are growing 300%+ year-over-year, and seven of eight&nbsp;sell&nbsp;to LSPs. We have the data position, the platform, the customers, and now the team.&nbsp;We're&nbsp;hiring the engineers who will build it with us.</span><span data-ccp-props="{}">&nbsp;</span></p> <p><strong>AI at LSP44</strong></p> <p>Every LSP44 team member is expected to be an intelligent, hands-on user of AI&nbsp;-&nbsp;and for Product, that bar is even higher: the products&nbsp;you’re&nbsp;defining are AI agents. We don’t expect everyone to be a data scientist, but we do expect everyone to identify where AI adds value, direct it effectively, evaluate its outputs critically, and govern it responsibly, in your own workflow and in the products you build.</p> <p><strong><span data-contrast="none"><span data-ccp-parastyle="heading 1">The Role</span></span></strong><span data-ccp-props="{"335559738":240,"335559739":120}">&nbsp;</span></p> <p>Most engineers build for customers. FDEs build with them. You'll be embedded directly with high-value LSP accounts — owning integration architecture, customizing agent workflows, and serving as the ground truth between how LSPs actually operate and how our product team thinks they do. Your job is to transform logistics from a reactive service into a programmable network — replacing manual workflows with autonomous agent-to-agent coordination. What you learn in the field shapes the roadmap. You ship in weeks, not quarters.</p> <p><strong><span data-contrast="none"><span data-ccp-parastyle="heading 1">What You'll Work On</span></span></strong><span data-ccp-props="{"335559738":240,"335559739":120}">&nbsp;</span></p> <ul> <li>Own end-to-end integration for dedicated LSP accounts — configure bi-directional webhooks and event-driven pipelines so AI agents can read, act, and write data into customer TMS, WMS, and ERP systems instantly</li> <li>Unify disparate customer data into a single actionable signal — driving dynamic interoperability across core business systems</li> <li>Customize interfaces and agent logic to fit existing LSP workflows across freight procurement, load tendering, and exception handling — reducing time-to-value and making adoption feel natural</li> <li>Feed the right context to agents and debug decisions when they go wrong — tracing failures back to the specific data point, prompt, or tool use that caused them</li> <li>Build event-driven pipelines (Kafka/PubSub) that carry agent intent at the scale of millions of logistics events per day</li> <li>Serve as the ground truth — we can't build a world-class product in a silo. Your field observations directly inform what gets on the roadmap and when</li> </ul> <p><strong><span data-contrast="none"><span data-ccp-parastyle="heading 1">What We're Looking For</span></span></strong><span data-ccp-props="{"335559738":240,"335559739":120}">&nbsp;</span></p> <p><strong><span data-contrast="none"><span data-ccp-parastyle="heading 2">Qualifications</span></span></strong><span data-ccp-props="{"335559738":200,"335559739":100}">&nbsp;</span></p> <ul> <li>5+ years in software engineering, solutions engineering, or technical implementation in a customer-facing role</li> <li>Mastery of API-first design and bi-directional webhook configuration</li> <li>Experience with event-driven architecture and stream processing (Kafka, PubSub, or similar)</li> <li>Hands-on integration experience with TMS, WMS, or ERP systems</li> <li>Strong debugging skills across distributed, agent-driven workflows</li> <li>Deep domain knowledge in logistics — freight procurement, load tendering, carrier management, and exception handling. LSP customers don't trust engineers who don't understand their world. You need to speak their language to earn the right to change how they work.</li> </ul> <p><strong><span data-contrast="none"><span data-ccp-parastyle="heading 2">Nice to Have</span></span></strong><span data-ccp-props="{"335559738":200,"335559739":100}">&nbsp;</span></p> <ul> <li>Experience with agentic AI systems — context feeding, prompt engineering, tool invocation, stateful agents</li> <li>Prior experience in a forward-deployed or field engineering role</li> <li>Containerization and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes)</li> </ul> <p><strong><span data-contrast="none"><span data-ccp-parastyle="heading 2">How You Work</span></span></strong><span data-ccp-props="{"335559738":200,"335559739":100}">&nbsp;</span></p> <ul> <li>You take ownership of outcomes, not just deliverables</li> <li>You bring back what you see in the field and use it to make the product better</li> <li>You move fast, iterate in the open, and don't wait for perfect conditions</li> <li>You can translate technical complexity to both engineers and LSP operators without losing either audience</li> </ul> <p><strong data-start="262" data-end="285">Work Authorization:</strong> Candidates must be authorised to work in the US without current or future employer-sponsored visa support.</p> <p><span data-contrast="auto"><strong><span data-ccp-props="{"134233117":false,"134233118":false,"335551550":6,"335551620":6,"335559738":240,"335559739":240}"><u>In-office Commitment:</u>&nbsp;</span></strong><span data-ccp-props="{"134233117":false,"134233118":false,"335551550":6,"335551620":6,"335559738":240,"335559739":240}">Our office is where ideas spark, connections thrive, and innovation comes alive. We are looking for candidates who are enthusiastic and committed&nbsp;to joining our team on-site,</span><span data-ccp-props="{"134233117":false,"134233118":false,"335551550":6,"335551620":6,"335559738":240,"335559739":240}"><span class="Apple-converted-space">&nbsp;</span>in our beautiful headquarters <strong>3 days a week</strong>. Together, we’re building something extraordinary—learn, grow, and thrive in our fast-paced, transformative environment.<br><br><span data-contrast="none"><span data-ccp-parastyle="heading 1">We continually evaluate our pay ranges to reflect skills, experience, and market conditions. The base salary offered will be determined by assessing a candidate's experience and skills relative to the scope and responsibilities of the position, as well as the specific geographic location where the job will be performed. Base salary is one component of project44's total compensation package, which also includes stock options for all EOR and project44-employed team members, bonus or commission eligibility depending on role, and a benefits package tailored to your country of employment. Specific benefits package offerings vary by country and may include health, dental, and vision coverage, retirement plans, and paid time off, in line with local market standards and statutory programs. The base salary range for this position is USD130,000 – USD190,000</span></span><br></span></span></p> <p><strong><span data-contrast="none"><span data-ccp-parastyle="heading 1">Diversity &amp; Inclusion</span></span></strong><span data-ccp-props="{"335559738":240,"335559739":120}">&nbsp;</span></p> <p><span data-contrast="auto">At project44,&nbsp;we're&nbsp;designing the future of how the world moves. As we work to deliver a truly world-class product,&nbsp;we're&nbsp;intentionally building teams that reflect the unique communities we serve.&nbsp;We're&nbsp;focused on creating a company where all team members can bring their authentic&nbsp;selves&nbsp;to work every day.</span><span data-ccp-props="{}">&nbsp;</span></p> <p><span data-contrast="auto">project44 is an equal opportunity employer. If you share our values and passion for the future of&nbsp;logistics,&nbsp;we'd&nbsp;love to review your application. Even if you&nbsp;don't&nbsp;meet 100% of the requirements, please consider applying — studies show you can still be a strong candidate at 50%.</span><span data-ccp-props="{}">&nbsp;</span></p> <p><span data-contrast="auto">For any accommodation needed during the hiring process, please email recruiting@project44.com.</span><span data-ccp-props="{}">&nbsp;</span></p> <p><span data-ccp-props="{"201341983":0,"335551550":6,"335551620":6,"335559739":160,"335559740":279}">&nbsp;</span></p><div class="content-conclusion"><p>&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p></div>

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