Forward Deployed Engineer 1
$90k - $105k+ 15% discretionary annual bonus
Junior, Mid
Bachelor's
Encino, Los Angeles, CA, USA
HybridOn-site in Encino Monday–Thursday; work from home Fridays.
Software EngineeringAI Application Engineering
About the job
Requirements
- A bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
- One to three years of professional experience writing code relied on by real users in software engineering, automation, data engineering, or a technical analyst role with substantial coding.
- Working proficiency in Python or TypeScript and SQL, plus experience with REST APIs and unstructured data.
- Hands-on experience building with large language model APIs, including prompting, structured outputs, and document extraction, in professional or personal projects.
- Daily use of AI coding tools and the habit of verifying their output with tests.
- Familiarity with loop engineering, including agent workflows that act, check their own results, and stop or escalate to a person at the appropriate point.
- Ability to ask questions before building and explain technical ideas to non-technical colleagues.
- Ability to think in systems and consider how workflow changes affect surrounding data, systems, and people.
- Organized, detail-oriented writing; workflow maps and specifications are deliverables in this role.
- Interest in financial services.
Responsibilities
- Embed with an assigned business team and learn its work by doing it alongside team members.
- Document workflows step by step, including inputs, systems, decisions, handoffs, exceptions, and upstream and downstream processes, in a standard format reviewed and approved by the team.
- Build and ship production automations for well-defined workflows.
- Work with Platform Engineering to run each automation on the existing platform, using shared data, integrations, and monitoring, and fitting it into existing systems.
- Write clear specifications and acceptance criteria for work belonging in the core lending platform, and hand them to Platform Engineering.
- Write tests and documentation for each automation, and take it through code review and the security and AI governance gate before production.
- Build using least-privilege agent identities, audit logging, and human review for outputs affecting a loan decision or fund disbursement.
- Measure time and error rates before and after each automation, and report the results.
- Train users on new automations, gather feedback, and fix issues promptly after launch.
- Monitor shipped automations, respond to failures, and maintain runbooks so the business team can handle exceptions.
- Learn the lending business from application through payoff to identify automation opportunities.
- Bring automation ideas and rough estimates of hours saved to the Forward Deployed Engineer II and the Head of Technology.
- Partner with Data & Analytics on data definitions and data-quality issues discovered in the field.
- Contribute reusable components to shared libraries.
- Follow engineering standards, including version control, code review, automated testing, and change management.
- Protect borrower data in line with company security policies and the AI Use Policy, and raise risks early.
- Keep workflow maps, specifications, runbooks, and change logs current.
- Provide regular status updates to department leaders and the Head of Technology.
Desired Qualifications
- Exposure to lending, real estate, construction, or accounting.
- Experience with OutSystems or another low-code platform, Microsoft 365/SharePoint, or Jira.
- A portfolio, GitHub profile, or other examples of shipped work.
About the company
Ascent Developer Solutions provides private lending and institutional debt financing for top-tier housing developers and investors. It offers short-term secured loans for purchasing, renovating, and constructing single-family, homebuilder, and multi-family projects, plus post-completion bridge financing, funded upfront and repaid with interest over a short period. The company uses proprietary data tools to tailor each loan to a project’s needs, structuring secured debt and charging origination fees and other costs. Its goal is to help developers bring residential properties to market by delivering flexible, customized capital.
Company Size
51-200
Company Stage
N/A
Total Funding
N/A
Headquarters
Los Angeles, California
Founded
2024
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Simplify's Take
What believers are saying
- June 2026 Boston expansion opened New England deal flow across Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Rhode Island.
- January 2026 manufactured-housing financing broadened demand beyond infill builders and single-lot homebuilders.
- June 2026 $400 million Thomas James Homes facility validates Ascent's institutional credibility and underwriting scale.
What critics are saying
- Thomas James Homes and manufactured-housing expansion increase concentration if one segment stalls in 2027.
- Short-term secured lending depends on cheap institutional capital; higher funding spreads compress returns quickly.
- A housing downturn triggers borrower defaults, collateral write-downs, and liquidity stress, threatening Ascent's platform.
What makes Ascent Developer Solutions unique
- Elliott-backed since July 2024, Ascent reached $3 billion origination by June 2026.
- Ascent underwrites bridge, renovation, construction, and manufactured-housing loans for elite residential developers.
- Its in-house construction management platform helps lenders move faster than banks and mortgage REITs.
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Benefits
- Health Insurance
- Dental Insurance
- Vision Insurance
- Health Savings Account/Flexible Spending Account
- 401(k) Retirement Plan