Lead Forward Deployed Engineer
franklin allianceAlbany (NY)
Lead Forward Deployed Engineer
Posted today
franklin allianceAlbany (NY)
SENIORITY
Lead
About the role
Forward-Deployed Engineer, Workflow Automation Remote (US) · Full-time About Franklin Alliance Franklin Alliance is an AI-enabled holding company in the accounting space. We invest in established boutique CPA firms across the country, keep the people and client relationships that make them valuable, and enhance how the work gets done underneath them. The thesis is simple. Most small accounting firms run on manual, person-dependent processes: client onboarding by email, document chasing, tax workpapers assembled by hand, bookkeeping reconciled line by line. Off-the-shelf AI and automation tools can now remove most of that drag, but firm owners and staff have neither the time nor the inclination to stitch those tools together. That gap is where this role lives. We are backed by institutional capital and we move quickly. This is a lean, outcome-driven environment: you will have real ownership, direct access to the partners, and a mandate to change how firms actually operate rather than write recommendations about it.
The Role:
You will be our first full-time internal forward-deployed engineer, embedded directly inside our CPA firms to find the workflows that burn the most hours and replace them with automated systems built from the best off-the-shelf AI and software tools available. You own the problem end to end: sit with the staff, map the process, pick the tools, build the integration, measure the result, and make it stick. This is not a research or advisory role, and it is not a pure software engineering role. The best mental model is a cross between an operations consultant and an integration engineer. Expect roughly a third of your time inside firms observing and interviewing, a third building and configuring, and a third measuring, documenting and training. What makes this different from an in-house automation job is repeatability. Every solution you build at one firm becomes a playbook we deploy across every Franklin Alliance member firm, so your work compounds: more hours removed, shorter cycle times and more margin added across the whole platform. You report directly to the founders.
What You Will Do:
- Discover and prioritize
- Embed in each firm as appropriate: shadow partners, managers and staff through tax, bookkeeping, payroll, advisory and admin workflows.
- Map current-state processes, time them, and quantify the cost of each (hours per return, days to close books, touches per client onboarding, write-offs from realization leakage).Build and maintain an alliance-wide automation backlog ranked by hours saved, margin impact and implementation effort.
- Design and build
- Select the best off-the-shelf tools for each problem and integrate them into working systems: LLM APIs, MCPs and agent platforms, workflow automation, document intelligence and OCR, RPA where needed, and each firm's practice management, tax, bookkeeping and payroll software.
- Write the glue code when no connector exists: scripts, API integrations, lightweight internal tools, prompt pipelines and data transformations.
- Treat client data security as a first-class constraint: handle PII and financial data under our data-handling policies, prefer zero-retention or private deployments, and document every data flow.
- Typical first-year targets: automated client document collection and reminders, tax workpaper preparation and tie-outs, bank and credit card transaction categorization, engagement letter and proposal generation, invoicing and collections follow-up, and standardized month-end close checklists.
- Deploy and make it stick
- Pilot each automation with a small group, measure against the baseline, iterate, then roll out firm-wide.
- Train staff, write the SOPs, and build the dashboards that show whether the new process is actually being followed.
- Package every working solution into a repeatable playbook (tooling, configuration, SOP, training material, KPIs) so it can be deployed at the next firm in days rather than months.
- Measure and report
- Own the automation scorecard: hours saved, cycle time, error rates, adoption and cost per automation, reported monthly to the partners.
Who We Are:
- Looking ForRequired
- A track record of taking a messy, multi-step business process and turning it into a working automated system that other people actually used. We care more about this than any specific title.
- Strong technical ability to weave multiple products together: REST APIs, webhooks, authentication, data mapping between systems, and scripting (Python or JavaScript) when a native connector does not exist.
- Hands-on experience building with LLMs in production or near-production settings: prompt design, structured outputs, retrieval, evaluation, and knowing when an LLM is the wrong tool.
- Deep familiarity with the modern automation stack.
- Process orientation: you document, diagram and measure before you build, and you think in baselines and before-and-after numbers.
- KPI-driven: you can define the metric that matters for a workflow, instrument it, and report on it without being asked.
- Excellent communication with non-developers. You will work with tax preparers, bookkeepers and firm partners, and you need to earn their trust and translate their complaints into requirements.
- Comfort with ambiguity and a high-growth pace. You set your own priorities and are biased to action.
- Willingness to travel regularly to firm offices.
Preferred:
- Working knowledge of accounting: how a tax return is prepared and reviewed, how books are closed, what realization and utilization mean in a CPA firm. A CPA, accounting degree, or 2+ years in an accounting or finance function is ideal but not required if you can show you learn domains fast.
- Experience with practice-management, tax and bookkeeping software commonly used by small firms.
- Prior forward-deployed, implementation, solutions engineering or operations consulting experience where you were accountable for client outcomes, not just code.
- A strong technical background: an engineering degree, time at a fast-moving technology company, or open-source and side projects that show real depth. A demonstrated portfolio of solved workflow problems can substitute for pedigree.
- Experience handling sensitive personal and financial data under compliance constraints.
- You will not thrive here ifYou want to build a product from scratch rather than assemble and configure the best existing tools.
- You prefer to hand a recommendation to someone else to implement.
- You need a defined roadmap.
- Proof of WorkWe hire on evidence, not resumes. With your application, include one of the following:
- A write-up of a complex workflow you automated end to end: the starting state, how you measured it, the tools you chose and why, what you built, the result in numbers, and what you would do differently. Two pages or a short video walkthrough is plenty.
- A link to a repository, Loom or live demo of a multi-tool system you built that stitched together at least three products.
- If you have not yet shipped something like this professionally, a redesign of a process you know well, showing the before-and-after map and the expected KPI movement.
Traveling Information:
This is a remote role with regular travel to our member firms' offices, roughly 25 to 40% of the time, especially during the first weeks of each engagement.
What We Offer:
Generous compensation plus equity A meritocracy with real impact within a fast-growing organization
Before you apply
Applying takes about a minute. These four things decide how fast it moves after that.
Your profile is current
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Two examples you can talk through
Not a portfolio — just two pieces of work where you can explain the decisions and what you'd change.
A number in mind
What you're on now and what would make you move. We negotiate better when we know both.
Your notice period
Employers plan around it, and it's the question that stalls offers most often.
Once you apply, someone reads it and calls you before anything reaches the employer — usually within two working days.