Application Guide
How to Apply for Forward Deployed Engineer – Enterprise Delivery
at Gray Swan
🏢 About Gray Swan
Gray Swan is a specialized AI security company focused exclusively on assessing AI model risks, positioning itself at the intersection of AI advancement and safety. Unlike general AI companies, they tackle the critical challenge of making AI trustworthy for enterprise deployment, offering a unique opportunity to work on cutting-edge security problems before they become mainstream concerns.
About This Role
As a Forward Deployed Engineer at Gray Swan, you'll be hands-on with the latest agentic AI systems, stress-testing them in lab environments while simultaneously helping enterprises deploy AI solutions rapidly and safely. This role bridges theoretical AI safety research with practical enterprise delivery, requiring you to identify novel failure modes in frontier AI and translate those insights into deployable security solutions.
💡 A Day in the Life
A typical day might involve morning sessions stress-testing new agentic AI behaviors in controlled lab environments, documenting novel failure modes, then transitioning to afternoon meetings with enterprise clients to help deploy AI solutions while implementing safety guardrails based on your morning findings. You'll constantly pivot between cutting-edge research problems and practical deployment challenges.
🚀 Application Tools
🎯 Who Gray Swan Is Looking For
- Has hands-on experience with AI safety evaluations, specifically testing for adversarial attacks, jailbreaks, or unintended behaviors in large language models or agentic systems
- Demonstrates proactive problem-spotting ability through examples of identifying novel AI failure modes before they became widely recognized
- Possesses technical depth in AI/ML with experience deploying production AI systems in enterprise environments, not just research prototypes
- Shows evidence of working on 'messy' frontier AI problems, such as emergent behaviors in multi-agent systems or safety-evaluation challenges
📝 Tips for Applying to Gray Swan
Highlight specific AI safety evaluation projects in your resume, detailing what you tested for (e.g., prompt injection, data leakage) and how you measured risk
Prepare concrete examples of 'thinking three steps ahead' about AI failures - describe a time you anticipated a problem others missed in AI deployment
Demonstrate your enterprise delivery experience by quantifying scale (models deployed, users impacted, uptime metrics) rather than just listing technologies
Research Gray Swan's public materials and reference specific tools or approaches they mention to show genuine interest in their unique AI security focus
Show how you've worked on 'edge cases' - include examples of solving non-standard AI problems that didn't have established solutions
✉️ What to Emphasize in Your Cover Letter
["Your experience with AI safety evaluations - specifically what you've tested and how you've measured risk in real AI systems", 'Examples of identifying novel AI failure modes before they became widely recognized, demonstrating proactive problem-spotting', 'Your track record of taking AI from prototype to production in enterprise environments, emphasizing security considerations', "Why Gray Swan's specific focus on AI security appeals to you, showing you understand their niche in the AI ecosystem"]
Generate Cover Letter →🔍 Research Before Applying
To stand out, make sure you've researched:
- → Gray Swan's public blog posts or research papers to understand their specific approach to AI risk assessment
- → The backgrounds of their leadership team to understand their technical and safety priorities
- → Their product offerings and how they differentiate from general AI security companies
- → Recent AI safety incidents in the news and think about how Gray Swan's tools might address similar risks
💬 Prepare for These Interview Topics
Based on this role, you may be asked about:
⚠️ Common Mistakes to Avoid
- Focusing only on AI development experience without emphasizing safety, testing, or risk assessment aspects
- Presenting generic AI deployment experience without specific examples of security considerations or failure mode analysis
- Demonstrating only theoretical knowledge of AI safety without hands-on evaluation or enterprise deployment experience
📅 Application Timeline
This position is open until filled. However, we recommend applying as soon as possible as roles at mission-driven organizations tend to fill quickly.
Typical hiring timeline:
Application Review
1-2 weeks
Initial Screening
Phone call or written assessment
Interviews
1-2 rounds, usually virtual
Offer
Congratulations!