About the role
<p><strong>About Wonderschool</strong><br>Wonderschool’s mission is to ensure every child has access to early childhood education that helps them realize their full potential. We empower small business owners, childcare providers, to launch and grow in-home programs through cutting-edge software, personalized coaching, and responsive support. We also partner with governments to modernize public childcare infrastructure. Our team is small, fast-moving, and deeply motivated by the impact we create in families and communities across the country.</p> <p><strong>
About
the Role</strong><br>We are looking for a Forward Deployed AI Engineer to lead product development on some of the most strategically important initiatives at Wonderschool. You’ll spend your time working directly with customers (traveling as needed), uncovering pain points, and building AI-powered solutions that drive measurable impact across revenue, operational efficiency, and user experience. You’ll act like a founder inside the company: identifying problems, shipping code, driving adoption, and iterating quickly based on what you learn. This role blends engineering, product, operations, and business leadership, and is ideal for someone who has launched products, acquired users, and driven growth independently. You will work closely with our sales, onboarding, and account management teams to automate workflows, build better customer experiences, and unlock new growth.</p> <p>This role is inspired by best-in-class FDSEs at companies like Palantir and is perfect for builders who love solving real-world problems in the field, not from behind a desk.</p> <p><strong>What You’ll Do</strong><br>Work directly with users and internal teams to identify high-leverage problems and ship product solutions. Write production code (approximately 50% of your time) and ship weekly improvements across the customer journey. Use tools like Widesurf, Cursor, and other AI accelerators to increase your velocity and quality of output. Build and deploy AI-powered tooling that eliminates manual effort and improves the experience for providers, parents, and government partners. Automate onboarding flows, proposal generation, reporting processes, and other operational workflows. Own full loops: talk to users, design solutions, write code, test, deploy, and monitor adoption. Prioritize based on business impact and collaborate across teams to drive measurable results.</p> <p><strong>What Success Looks Like</strong><br>You uncover user pain points faster than anyone else and consistently ship solutions that address them. You deploy AI-infused internal tools or product experiences that improve core metrics (conversion, retention, revenue). You fully own feedback loops, from discovery to deployment, and iterate rapidly. Internal teams rely on your tools to operate faster and with fewer resources. You’re moving fast, staying close to the customer, and operating with very little hand-holding.</p> <p><strong>
Who You Are</strong><br>A builder and founder at heart, you’ve started a company, built products that got users, or made revenue independently. Comfortable talking to users weekly and distilling insight into product decisions. Technical enough to ship production code on your own, experience with Python, JavaScript, or similar languages. Experienced using AI/LLMs and developer tools like Windsurf and Cursor to move faster and smarter. Business-minded, you’ve worked in consulting, managed a P&amp;L, or attended business school and know how to prioritize based on ROI. Comfortable operating in ambiguity and energized by a high-trust, high-impact, in-person environment.</p> <p><strong>
Why Join Us</strong><br>Make a direct impact on families, small business owners, and communities. Operate with founder-like ownership on the company’s most important priorities. Join a small, fast-moving team with a bias for action. Talk to users, ship weekly, and see your work go live and drive real-world outcomes. Help reimagine early education and child care for the modern era.</p> <p><strong>Location</strong></p> <p>In-person, 5-6 days a week. This role requires regular client travel.</p>
About Wonderschool
Started in 2016 by a group of educators and technologists in California, Wonderschool offers a platform where people can start infant and toddler programs and preschools out of their homes.
Wonderschool supports experienced educators and childcare providers to start their own childcares or preschools out of their homes, whether they live in apartments, condos, or homes that they rent or own.
Wonderschool provides assistance with licensing, program setup, marketing, and everything in between. The company’s software platform allows teachers to manage their students, parents, and their program from one dashboard. Along with this, Wonderschool has built a marketplace for parents to search Wonderschool programs, schedule visits, enroll their children, and make payments.
It’s been proven time and time again that children should start developing cognitive, motor, behavioral, and social skills from as early as 6 months, and Wonderschool is committed to increasing families’ access to high-quality care and learning environments for children.
Other roles at Wonderschool
Refer someone
Know someone great for this role?
Share your link. If they get hired through Standout, you get $3,000.
Job details
Location
San Francisco, Michigan + 3 more
Funding
Total raised
$50M
Last stage
Growth
Investors
Founders
What happens next.
No applications, no recruiter spam. Just the intro.
Confirm the fit
A few questions to make sure this role is the right shape for you. Two minutes.
I pitch you to the company
I write the intro, send it to the founder, and handle the back-and-forth.
A meeting lands on your calendar
If they’re a yes, I book the chat. You show up — that’s the whole job-hunt.