Forward Deployed Engineer

About Ideogram

Ideogram’s mission is to make world-class design accessible to everyone, multiplying human creativity. We build proprietary generative media models and AI native creative workflows, tackling unsolved challenges in graphic design. Our team includes builders with a track record of technology breakthroughs including early research in Diffusion Models, Google’s Imagen, and Imagen Video. We care about design, taste, and craft as much as research and engineering – shipping experiences that creatives actually love.

We’ve raised nearly $100M, led by Andreessen Horowitz and Index Ventures. Headquartered in Toronto with a growing team in NYC, we're scaling fast, aiming to triple over the next year. We're a flat team with a culture of high ownership, collaboration, and mentorship.

Explore Ideogram 3.0, Canvas, and Character blog posts, and try Ideogram at ideogram.ai.

About The Role

As Ideogram’s first Forward Deployed Engineer, you will be instrumental in delivering state-of-the-art generative image and design technology to enterprise customers with unique requirements. You’ll collaborate directly with customers to design, prototype, develop, and deploy integrations, bringing Ideogram’s models into production environments. This includes applications in on-brand custom models, design and marketing workflows, and the development of entirely new product experiences. You will transfer customer insights and engineering implementations to the product engineering team, integrating them into the Ideogram Product where common customer needs are identified.

What You Will Be Doing

• Prototype and Workflow Development: Design, build, and rapidly iterate on prototypes and workflows using Python, our APIs, and open source models to ship bespoke solutions for customers with unique requirements.
• Direct Customer Engagement: Work closely with customer teams to understand their challenges and optimize their use of Ideogram's models.
• Optimization and Experimentation: Push the boundaries of what's possible with image generation via prompt engineering, dataset curation and refinement, model fine-tuning, and other innovative research and engineering ideas.
• Connecting Product and Customer: Translate customer feedback and insights into actionable product ideas, developer tools, and enhanced APIs, accelerating progress for all.
• Establishing Repeatable Processes: Build reusable internal assets, including sample applications, demo frameworks, and technical documentation, to streamline and strengthen future integrations.

What We’re Looking For

• A track record of successfully developing and deploying AI projects and prototypes.
• Proficiency in Python and a solid understanding of data structures, algorithms, and API integration. Capable of building, deploying, and debugging API endpoints.
• Technical aptitude to understand the parameters of our image generation models and their downstream applications.
• Experience working directly with customers in a technical capacity, whether through professional roles or personal projects.
• Excellent communication and problem solving skills, with an ability to think from first principles and collaborate to overcome obstacles.
• Ability to break down open-ended, complex projects and take end to end ownership of them.
• Willingness and ability to travel for on-site engagements with customers around the world.

Nice to Haves

• Experience with deploying and running open source models on cloud VMs.
• 2+ years of experience in a Software Engineering/ML Engineering role.
• Excitement for generative AI and how it can transform creativity and design.

Our Culture

We’re a team of exceptionally talented, curious builders who love solving tough problems and turning bold ideas into reality. We move fast, collaborate deeply, and operate without unnecessary hierarchy, because we believe the best ideas can come from anyone.

Everyone at Ideogram rolls up their sleeves to make our products and our customers successful. We thrive on curiosity, creativity, and shared ownership. We believe that small, dedicated teams working together with trust and purpose can move faster, think bigger, and create amazing things.

Ideogram is committed to welcoming everyone — regardless of gender identity, orientation, or expression. Our mission is to create belonging and remove barriers so everyone can create boldly.

What We Offer

• Competitive compensation and equity designed to recognize the value and impact of your contributions to Ideogram’s success.
• 4 weeks of vacation to recharge and explore.
• Comprehensive health, vision, and dental coverage starting on day one.
• RRSP/401(k) with employer match up to 4% to invest in your future from the moment you join.
• Top-of-the-line tools and tech to fuel your creativity and productivity.
• Toronto HQ perks: Steps from Union Station and the PATH, with team lunches every Tuesday and dinners every Thursday.
• Autonomy to explore and experiment — whether you’re testing new ideas, running large-scale experiments, or diving into research, you’ll have access to compute/resources you need when there’s a clear business or creative use case. We encourage curiosity and bold thinking.
• A culture of learning and growth, where curiosity is encouraged and mentorship is part of the journey.
• Fully remote flexibility across North America, with regular in-person team meetups and collaboration opportunities.