Forward Deployed Engineer

Forward Deployed Engineer

Company: Closure
Location: New York, NY or San Francisco Bay Area
Compensation: $140,000 - $220,000 + founding-level equity
Employment Type: Full-time
Visa Sponsorship: Not available

About Closure

Closure helps law enforcement search evidence and solve crime. Police and prosecutors across the US use it to accelerate investigations into homicides, cold cases and other major offenses by reducing digital evidence overload, with live agency deployments and paying customers.

Closure was founded in 2025 by ex-Palantir and ex-IDF engineers and is backed by Y Combinator (W25), CRV, Hawktail, Liquid2 and Adverb.

The Role

Closure is hiring a Forward Deployed Engineer to own customer outcomes end to end: scope pilots, ingest messy evidentiary data, configure the product per agency, sit with detectives and prosecutors while they work cases, write scripts and integrations when the product does not quite fit, and feed learnings into the roadmap. You own the customer relationship from pilot through first renewal. Time is roughly 60% customer-facing, 30% building and 10% internal. This is not a sales engineering seat.

What You Will Do

• Scope pilots with new agencies and turn operational goals into deployment plans.
• Ingest messy evidentiary data (device extractions, call records, license-plate reader data, body cam, jail call audio, PDFs, social media).
• Configure the product per agency and write scripts or integrations as needed.
• Work alongside detectives, prosecutors and analysts and turn workflow gaps into product improvements.
• Own customer relationships from pilot through renewal and expansion.

What You Bring

• 4-8 years of experience
• Strong engineering in Python and/or TypeScript, APIs and data pipelines, shipping small tools without a handoff
• Genuinely customer-facing and comfortable on-site in law-enforcement settings
• Bias to action, comfort with ambiguity and an owner mindset
• Mission alignment with public safety and US government work
• Willingness to complete FBI background checks and CJIS clearance (supported by the company)
• Based in NYC or the SF Bay Area

Nice to Have

• FDE, solutions or implementation experience selling to non-tech-native customers (Palantir FDE is the canonical profile)
• Law enforcement, prosecution, intelligence, defense or forensics exposure
• Familiarity with digital evidence formats
• Design sensibility

Benefits

401(k), medical and dental, and meaningful founding-hire equity (4-year vest, 1-year cliff).

REVENUE: 15.5% of first-year salary. Est. fee per hire $22K-$34K; 1 seat(s).

TARGET COMPANIES (client-profile (Palantir FDE canonical) + suggested): Palantir, Anduril, Axon, Cellebrite, Flock Safety, Mark43, Relativity.

BEST-FIT CANDIDATE: 4-8 yrs; Python/TS + data pipelines; truly customer-facing; CJIS-eligible; visa: NO sponsorship; location: NYC or SF Bay.