Forgepoint
About Forgepoint
Revitalize an industry. Rebuild America’s manufacturing backbone.
America’s $3 trillion manufacturing base is one of the most powerful forces in the world. It’s also one of the most overlooked when it comes to software.
America builds satellites, jet engines, machine tooling, and semiconductors with precision measured in microns, but the software systems running our factories are decades out of date.
Walk into any factory office in America and you’ll see it: estimators toggling between ten spreadsheets, procurement managers forwarding PDFs, and accountants retyping invoices by hand. The machines on the shop floor are state‑of‑the‑art, but the computers in the office are running on Excel, email, and prayers.
Our co‑founder Jack saw it firsthand at Northrop Grumman, at Bain & Co, and at the dozens of aerospace manufacturers that he’s purchased from. Behind every great American product is a mountain of manual work that bottlenecks production and holds back growth.
This inefficiency doesn’t just slow the manufacturer down. It slows down our entire economy. It means fewer products get built and longer lead times for the ones that do. Worst of all: even customers who want to buy American often have no choice but to buy from overseas competitors who can move faster.
But now, for the first time, there’s a way to fix it.
At Forgepoint, we’re building
AI workers
that automate the manufacturing back office. Our AI workers handle critical but time‑consuming jobs like quoting, purchasing, invoicing, and sales coordination. Our AI workers eliminate the bottlenecks that have held manufacturers back for decades, turning processes that once took weeks into minutes.
This is about more than software. It’s about revitalizing the infrastructure that builds everything else. It’s about equipping US manufacturers with the best software in the world so they can focus on what they do best: making great products.
We’re backed by top‑tier investors like
a16z speedrun, and angels from Brex, Xwing, and Betterment,
and already have more customer demand than we can serve.
The market is vast, the mission is urgent, and the opportunity is generational.
Join us as we rebuild the digital foundation of American manufacturing — and create a billion‑dollar company in the process.
Our Team Jack Strauss — Co‑Founder & CEO Jack began his career working for some of the largest OEMs in the world, including Acer Computers and Northrop Grumman. He later joined Bain & Co’s manufacturing practice where he advised Fortune 500 industrial firms, primarily in the semiconductor and aerospace sectors. Jack then joined Xwing, an early stage startup developing an AI aircraft pilot, where he served as Chief of Staff as the company scaled from 25 to 150 employees in 18 months. Jack ultimately led Xwing’s entire GTM function, selling into the US military and aircraft OEMs before the company’s acquisition by Joby Aviation. Jack holds an MBA from Stanford University, and a BA in Chinese Studies from the University of Southern California. Jack is fluent in Mandarin and is an avid backpacker and spearfisher.
Alex Pareto — Co‑Founder & CTO Alex began his career at Meta, just before founding Demeanor, a YC backed startup building tools for creators. Demeanor was later acquired by NTWRK / Complex, where he joined on as the Director of Engineering and built out their initial EPD team. After NTWRK, Alex joined Brex as a founding engineer on the Spend Management team. He grew with the product and was ultimately tapped to be Head of Engineering for the entire 40 person Spend Management engineering team. Alex holds a BS in Computer Science from the University of Southern California and is an avid skier & snowboarder.
How we work
In person, every day in NYC — high bandwidth collaboration and an energy you can feel
Talk to users constantly — We build with manufacturers, not for them
Extreme ownership — We take full responsibility for outcomes. Own problems end‑to‑end and drive solutions without waiting for permission
If you’re driven, low‑ego, and excited to rebuild the digital backbone of American manufacturing, you’ll do the best work of your career here.
Our Values
Go Big — Set goals that make us uncomfortable and to fundamentally change the industry.
Serve the Builders — Put manufacturers first. We exist to help them thrive.
AI First, End to End — Treat AI as the default interface for everything. Thread it through every workflow for us and our customers.
Play the Long Game — Make choices that compound. Optimize for durability, trust, and resilience with our customers, our partners, and our team.
Learn Loud and Fast — Seek feedback, iterate quickly, and turn setbacks into forward motion.
Urgent and Excellent — Move fast without breaking craft. Balance pace with quality and sustainability.
The Role: AI Deployment Strategist This is a client‑facing deployment + strategy role. You will be the on‑site lead responsible for transforming our customers’ operations from manual processes to fully automated, AI‑powered workflows. You’ll work shoulder‑to‑shoulder with CEOs, COOs, and Plant Managers to map how their work gets done today, then you’ll design how our AI workers should behave inside those workflows, configure them, and launch them. This role will require a combination of product, operations, and consulting skillsets.
You will:
Lead on‑site discovery and process mapping after contract signature
Sit with sales, quoting, purchasing, order entry, and finance teams to document current workflows
Identify bottlenecks, handoffs, and edge cases across quote‑to‑cash
Define measurable success criteria with customer sponsors
Design agent behaviors and operating playbooks
Translate business rules into agent tasks, guardrails, approvals, and handoffs
Specify data inputs / outputs, exception paths, and quality controls
Propose phased rollouts that de‑risk adoption and show fast wins
Configure and launch agents
Configure agents, connect data sources, and set up approval paths and notifications
Run pilots, collect feedback, and iterate quickly with users
Coordinate change management, training, and go‑live readiness
Prove value and systematize
Instrument outcomes and measure impact vs. baseline
Capture learnings into playbooks, templates, and internal tooling to make future deployments faster
Help build the FDE function
Establish the working cadence, QA standards, and documentation patterns
Contribute to hiring profiles, interviews, and onboarding as we scale
You’ll collaborate directly with executives and frontline operators, switching comfortably between the shop floor and the boardroom. The work is hands‑on, fast‑moving, and deeply user‑centric.
Where this role is headed:
If you’re the right fit and perform well, we want you to lead and build out the entire Forward Deployed Engineering organization. Over the next year, you’ll help us scale from one FDE to a team of dozens, establishing the playbooks, standards, and culture that will define how Forgepoint deploys AI workers across hundreds of manufacturers. This is a chance to shape a critical function from the ground up and grow into a leadership role as the company scales.
Who you are
3–7+ years in management consulting (Bain, BCG, McKinsey, or similar) or software implementation, with meaningful client‑facing delivery experience
Strong process design instincts and an eye for simplification, measurement, and operational quality
Exceptional communicator and facilitator who can run workshops, align stakeholders, and drive decisions
Comfortable turning ambiguous business rules into precise operating procedures
Data‑curious and analytical. Comfortable in spreadsheets and basic data exploration to validate assumptions
Action‑oriented, organized, and calm under pressure. You close every loop.
Excited to work in person 5 days a week in NYC and to travel to customer sites across the US
Motivated by our mission to strengthen American manufacturing
Nice to have:
Familiarity with software delivery or enterprise implementations
Past experience in the manufacturing industry or other industrial setting
Exposure to ERPs, MRPs, CRMs, or accounting systems common in manufacturing
Experience designing SOPs and change‑management plans
Awareness of LLM / AI concepts
Light familiarity with our stack (TypeScript, NodeJS, React, PostgreSQL) is a plus, but not expected
What success looks like in 30, 60, 120 days
30 days: You’ve led discovery on one account, delivered a clear current‑state map, and proposed a phased agent plan
60 days: You’ve launched multiple agents in production for 1-2 customers with measurable impact, and trained + happy end users
120 days: You've successfully deployed agents across 5+ customers, documented measurable impact at each, and built an internal library of playbooks, templates, and automation tools that cut deployment time in half
Comp & Benefits
Top‑tier salary and equity
Great healthcare + gym stipend
Covered lunch and dinner at the office
Travel across the USA to work side‑by‑side with our customers on their shop floors
Location
Onsite in New York City. This role requires in‑person collaboration
#J-18808-Ljbffr
America’s $3 trillion manufacturing base is one of the most powerful forces in the world. It’s also one of the most overlooked when it comes to software.
America builds satellites, jet engines, machine tooling, and semiconductors with precision measured in microns, but the software systems running our factories are decades out of date.
Walk into any factory office in America and you’ll see it: estimators toggling between ten spreadsheets, procurement managers forwarding PDFs, and accountants retyping invoices by hand. The machines on the shop floor are state‑of‑the‑art, but the computers in the office are running on Excel, email, and prayers.
Our co‑founder Jack saw it firsthand at Northrop Grumman, at Bain & Co, and at the dozens of aerospace manufacturers that he’s purchased from. Behind every great American product is a mountain of manual work that bottlenecks production and holds back growth.
This inefficiency doesn’t just slow the manufacturer down. It slows down our entire economy. It means fewer products get built and longer lead times for the ones that do. Worst of all: even customers who want to buy American often have no choice but to buy from overseas competitors who can move faster.
But now, for the first time, there’s a way to fix it.
At Forgepoint, we’re building
AI workers
that automate the manufacturing back office. Our AI workers handle critical but time‑consuming jobs like quoting, purchasing, invoicing, and sales coordination. Our AI workers eliminate the bottlenecks that have held manufacturers back for decades, turning processes that once took weeks into minutes.
This is about more than software. It’s about revitalizing the infrastructure that builds everything else. It’s about equipping US manufacturers with the best software in the world so they can focus on what they do best: making great products.
We’re backed by top‑tier investors like
a16z speedrun, and angels from Brex, Xwing, and Betterment,
and already have more customer demand than we can serve.
The market is vast, the mission is urgent, and the opportunity is generational.
Join us as we rebuild the digital foundation of American manufacturing — and create a billion‑dollar company in the process.
Our Team Jack Strauss — Co‑Founder & CEO Jack began his career working for some of the largest OEMs in the world, including Acer Computers and Northrop Grumman. He later joined Bain & Co’s manufacturing practice where he advised Fortune 500 industrial firms, primarily in the semiconductor and aerospace sectors. Jack then joined Xwing, an early stage startup developing an AI aircraft pilot, where he served as Chief of Staff as the company scaled from 25 to 150 employees in 18 months. Jack ultimately led Xwing’s entire GTM function, selling into the US military and aircraft OEMs before the company’s acquisition by Joby Aviation. Jack holds an MBA from Stanford University, and a BA in Chinese Studies from the University of Southern California. Jack is fluent in Mandarin and is an avid backpacker and spearfisher.
Alex Pareto — Co‑Founder & CTO Alex began his career at Meta, just before founding Demeanor, a YC backed startup building tools for creators. Demeanor was later acquired by NTWRK / Complex, where he joined on as the Director of Engineering and built out their initial EPD team. After NTWRK, Alex joined Brex as a founding engineer on the Spend Management team. He grew with the product and was ultimately tapped to be Head of Engineering for the entire 40 person Spend Management engineering team. Alex holds a BS in Computer Science from the University of Southern California and is an avid skier & snowboarder.
How we work
In person, every day in NYC — high bandwidth collaboration and an energy you can feel
Talk to users constantly — We build with manufacturers, not for them
Extreme ownership — We take full responsibility for outcomes. Own problems end‑to‑end and drive solutions without waiting for permission
If you’re driven, low‑ego, and excited to rebuild the digital backbone of American manufacturing, you’ll do the best work of your career here.
Our Values
Go Big — Set goals that make us uncomfortable and to fundamentally change the industry.
Serve the Builders — Put manufacturers first. We exist to help them thrive.
AI First, End to End — Treat AI as the default interface for everything. Thread it through every workflow for us and our customers.
Play the Long Game — Make choices that compound. Optimize for durability, trust, and resilience with our customers, our partners, and our team.
Learn Loud and Fast — Seek feedback, iterate quickly, and turn setbacks into forward motion.
Urgent and Excellent — Move fast without breaking craft. Balance pace with quality and sustainability.
The Role: AI Deployment Strategist This is a client‑facing deployment + strategy role. You will be the on‑site lead responsible for transforming our customers’ operations from manual processes to fully automated, AI‑powered workflows. You’ll work shoulder‑to‑shoulder with CEOs, COOs, and Plant Managers to map how their work gets done today, then you’ll design how our AI workers should behave inside those workflows, configure them, and launch them. This role will require a combination of product, operations, and consulting skillsets.
You will:
Lead on‑site discovery and process mapping after contract signature
Sit with sales, quoting, purchasing, order entry, and finance teams to document current workflows
Identify bottlenecks, handoffs, and edge cases across quote‑to‑cash
Define measurable success criteria with customer sponsors
Design agent behaviors and operating playbooks
Translate business rules into agent tasks, guardrails, approvals, and handoffs
Specify data inputs / outputs, exception paths, and quality controls
Propose phased rollouts that de‑risk adoption and show fast wins
Configure and launch agents
Configure agents, connect data sources, and set up approval paths and notifications
Run pilots, collect feedback, and iterate quickly with users
Coordinate change management, training, and go‑live readiness
Prove value and systematize
Instrument outcomes and measure impact vs. baseline
Capture learnings into playbooks, templates, and internal tooling to make future deployments faster
Help build the FDE function
Establish the working cadence, QA standards, and documentation patterns
Contribute to hiring profiles, interviews, and onboarding as we scale
You’ll collaborate directly with executives and frontline operators, switching comfortably between the shop floor and the boardroom. The work is hands‑on, fast‑moving, and deeply user‑centric.
Where this role is headed:
If you’re the right fit and perform well, we want you to lead and build out the entire Forward Deployed Engineering organization. Over the next year, you’ll help us scale from one FDE to a team of dozens, establishing the playbooks, standards, and culture that will define how Forgepoint deploys AI workers across hundreds of manufacturers. This is a chance to shape a critical function from the ground up and grow into a leadership role as the company scales.
Who you are
3–7+ years in management consulting (Bain, BCG, McKinsey, or similar) or software implementation, with meaningful client‑facing delivery experience
Strong process design instincts and an eye for simplification, measurement, and operational quality
Exceptional communicator and facilitator who can run workshops, align stakeholders, and drive decisions
Comfortable turning ambiguous business rules into precise operating procedures
Data‑curious and analytical. Comfortable in spreadsheets and basic data exploration to validate assumptions
Action‑oriented, organized, and calm under pressure. You close every loop.
Excited to work in person 5 days a week in NYC and to travel to customer sites across the US
Motivated by our mission to strengthen American manufacturing
Nice to have:
Familiarity with software delivery or enterprise implementations
Past experience in the manufacturing industry or other industrial setting
Exposure to ERPs, MRPs, CRMs, or accounting systems common in manufacturing
Experience designing SOPs and change‑management plans
Awareness of LLM / AI concepts
Light familiarity with our stack (TypeScript, NodeJS, React, PostgreSQL) is a plus, but not expected
What success looks like in 30, 60, 120 days
30 days: You’ve led discovery on one account, delivered a clear current‑state map, and proposed a phased agent plan
60 days: You’ve launched multiple agents in production for 1-2 customers with measurable impact, and trained + happy end users
120 days: You've successfully deployed agents across 5+ customers, documented measurable impact at each, and built an internal library of playbooks, templates, and automation tools that cut deployment time in half
Comp & Benefits
Top‑tier salary and equity
Great healthcare + gym stipend
Covered lunch and dinner at the office
Travel across the USA to work side‑by‑side with our customers on their shop floors
Location
Onsite in New York City. This role requires in‑person collaboration
#J-18808-Ljbffr