Forward Deployed Engineer (Contract)
Remote (US) | Contract through December 2026 (potential to extend) | $100,000/year | Product, Tech & Data
About the Role
Client demand is ramping up quickly, and we need a Forward Deployed Engineer who can get up to speed fast and start shipping almost immediately. You'll embed directly with Pinata's team and customers, turning messy, half-defined problems into shipped software. This isn't a traditional engineering seat where you take fully-scoped tickets from a backlog — you'll sit with the people who actually feel the problem, figure out what "solved" looks like, and build it yourself, end to end. Speed matters here more than almost anything else: we need someone who can pick up context quickly and start contributing in weeks, not months.
You won't be building in isolation: our Head of Product will mentor you on how we approach problems here, and you'll collaborate closely with our designer on the interfaces you ship.
This is a full-stack role from day one: you'll build the interfaces, tools, and workflows that make our product usable for renters, partners, and internal teams, as well as the APIs, services, and backend logic behind them. We need someone comfortable moving across the whole stack rather than staying in one lane.
This is a contract engagement running through December 2026, with the possibility of extension (or conversion to a longer-term arrangement) if it's a strong mutual fit.
About Us
Pinata is the market leader in the rental rewards space. We help renters earn rewards and build credit for paying their rent, transforming a monthly obligation into a path toward better financial health. Our team is mission-driven, curious, and scrappy. We like to move fast, solve real problems, and have fun doing it.
What You'll Do
- Embed with real problems. Work directly with internal stakeholders and, where relevant, external partners to understand what they're actually trying to accomplish — not just what they asked for.
- Ship, don't just scope. Take a prototype or a rough idea and turn it into a production-ready feature that people rely on, including the unglamorous parts: edge cases, error states, and the fixes that come after launch.
- Build full-stack. You'll move between user-facing interfaces and the backend services, APIs, and integrations that power them, depending on what the problem in front of you needs.
- Translate in both directions. Turn a stakeholder's vague ask into a concrete technical plan, and turn technical constraints back into terms a non-technical partner can act on.
- Debug in production. When something breaks in the field, you're comfortable tracing it down and shipping the fix yourself rather than filing it and waiting.
- Feed the core product. Share what you learn from being close to real usage with the broader engineering and product team, so fixes and patterns generalize beyond the one problem in front of you.
- Operate without a playbook. Process here is often something you'll help define, not something that already exists for you to follow.
What We're Looking For
- Fast ramp-up above all else. You've proven you can drop into an unfamiliar codebase or domain and become productive in days, not weeks — this is the single most important trait for this role right now.
- A bias toward speed: you'd rather ship a working v1 today and iterate than spend a week getting it perfect before anyone sees it.
- Strong full-stack engineering fundamentals: hands-on front-end experience (modern JS/TypeScript framework — React or similar) plus backend experience (APIs, services, databases) — deep enough that you're not slowed down learning the basics on the job.
- A track record of owning something end to end — from ambiguous problem to shipped, working software — rather than only executing pre-scoped tickets.
- Comfort working directly with non-technical stakeholders: gathering real requirements, managing expectations, and communicating trade-offs without jargon.
- Genuine comfort with ambiguity. You can impose structure on a vague situation without oversimplifying it, and you're not waiting for someone else to hand you a fully-formed spec.
- Comfort using Claude and other AI/LLM tools as part of your day-to-day workflow — including to accelerate how fast you learn a new part of the codebase or domain. Claude is a core part of how we build here.
- Excellent written and verbal communication in a remote, small-team environment.
- Availability for full-time hours starting as soon as possible.
Bonus Traits
- Experience in fintech, credit, or rental/proptech, or another regulated data environment.
- Experience working directly with external customers or partners on technical implementations (a prior FDE, solutions engineer, or consulting-adjacent background).
- Experience shipping AI-powered features or working with LLM APIs in production.
- Prior experience as an independent contractor, comfortable owning deliverables without close day-to-day supervision.
Contract Details
- Compensation: $100,000/year, paid as a 1099 contractor (or via your PEO/EOR of choice).
- Schedule: Full-time hours, remote, US-based. We're looking to have someone start immediately given growing client demand.
- Term: Now through December 2026, with the possibility of extension if the team wants to continue the engagement.
- This is not a W-2 employee role; no benefits are included. Candidates are responsible for their own taxes and insurance.
Why Join Pinata?
- Mission-driven product in a growing niche.
- Collaborative and respectful remote team.
- Built-in support: you won't have to figure this out entirely alone — our Head of Product is there to mentor you, and our designer collaborates closely on anything user-facing.
- Real ownership: you'll shape how this role and its scope evolve, not inherit a pre-defined lane.
- We evaluate candidates on demonstrated capability, and a degree is not required for this role.
To apply, please share your resume.