Forward Deployed Engineer

Forward Deployed Engineer
Turn messy operational workflows into production software
NYC | In-Office (flexible) 

Company Overview
Property management is one of the largest and least modernized service industries in the world. Millions of apartment homes are managed through manual workflows, disconnected systems, fragmented data, and inconsistent processes. 

Lightswitch is building the category-defining property management platform. We acquire leading regional operators, integrate them into a single operating company, and use purpose-built technology to improve service quality, decision-making, and profitability. Lightswitch has scaled to a top 50 player in the industry and is on track to become a top 10 player in the near-term. 

We are not a traditional private equity roll-up or a pure software company. Backed by Bain Capital Ventures and led by a founding team with roots in private equity, real estate, and technology, Lightswitch is combining acquisitions, operating discipline, permanent capital, and AI-native technology to transform a large, fragmented industry from the inside. 

Role Overview 
Property management runs on manual workflows. Someone spends hours re-entering data between systems. A monthly close requires multiple people touching the same data in sequence. A new property onboarding process depends on email threads, PDFs, spreadsheets, and tribal knowledge. 

We are hiring a Forward Deployed Engineer to find these workflows, map them, and replace the highest-value ones with software. Some solutions will use AI agents. Some will be deterministic automations. Some will be internal tools. Some will be integrations between systems that were not designed to talk to each other. Your job is to pick the right tool, ship quickly, and make sure the solution actually gets used. 

This is not a no-code ops role. You should be comfortable writing production software, integrating with third-party systems, working with messy data, and owning workflows that the business depends on. You will work directly with operators and executives across our platform, partner closely with our founding engineer, and build the automation layer that helps Lightswitch scale. 

What Success Looks Like 
● You’ve shipped automations that operators rely on into daily production use. 
● A workflow that took hours now runs as a background process, and those hours have been redirected to higher-value work. 
● Something you built once has been reused across multiple portfolio companies because you designed for multiple deployments. 
● You can point to specific metrics (hours saved, error rate reduced, etc.) that moved because of your work. 
● Operators come to you with problems because they’ve seen what you can do. 

What We’re Looking For 
● 4-7+ years of engineering experience. You’ve built internal tools, workflow automations, and integrations in a forward-deployed or customer-facing context. 
● Built for operators, not just engineers. You’ve built software where the end user is a non-technical operator, and you care whether the product is actually used. 
● Comfortable with messy systems. You’ve worked with legacy ERPs, fragmented data, hostile APIs, spreadsheets, PDFs, third-party portals, or systems that were never designed to talk to each other – and still produced reliable results. 
● Consultant for discovery, engineer for delivery. You can sit with an operator, map workflows, identify bottlenecks, size the opportunity, and then write production code.
● Pragmatic builder. You choose the right tool for the job: an LLM agent, an API integration, a rules engine, a script, a workflow engine, or a simpler process. You know where AI breaks down and when deterministic software is the better answer. 
● Forward-deployed mindset. You like going on-site, shadowing users, and finding problems that never made it into a requirements doc. 
● Ships fast and owns what you ship. You iterate from real usage, measure whether your work is saving time or reducing errors, and maintain what you put into production. 
● High agency, low ego. You are comfortable with ambiguity, direct user feedback, and doing whatever it takes to get from messy problem to working system. 

Why Lightswitch 
● Unique company model. We own the operating environment, so you can discover, build, deploy, and iterate in the real world – we are the customer. 
● Massive surface area. Property management is full of manual, high-value workflows across accounting, leasing, maintenance, onboarding, vendor management, and more. 
● Immediate impact. You will build tools that real operators use within weeks, not years. 
● Permanent capital. We are building an enduring company. What you build stays running, gets better over time, and scales with every acquisition. 
● Backed to scale. Lightswitch is backed by Bain Capital Ventures and is building toward national scale in a massive, fragmented category. 
● Career upside. This is an early technical role with meaningful equity and the opportunity to help define how a large services platform becomes AI-native.