Kepler
1 open Forward Deployed Engineer role at Kepler. Curated with comp bands.
Comp on the board: $200K–$280K + equity.
On the board since Jul 2026 · still hiring
Our take
Why Kepler
The Palantir Foundry core team selling the FDE motion back to finance — if the 'verifiable trust layer' bet is right, one of the highest-leverage early seats on the board.
- FDE type
- True forward-deployed
- Travel
- High
- Comp
- Competitive
- Stage
- Early-stage
A good fit if you're…
- Engineers who want Palantir's deployment DNA at founding-team scale, not a 4,000-person org
- People who thrive in high-stakes financial-services accounts ($10B+ AUM firms)
- Full-stack builders comfortable with a Rust/TypeScript stack and 30–50% travel from NYC
- Candidates underwriting equity in an unproven thesis over a liquid public-company bet
An agent harness built by Foundry's architects
Kepler builds an 'agent harness' — a trust layer that wraps LLMs in deterministic pipelines so every output traces back to source, auditable and reproducible. The first product pulls comparables, builds models, and researches filings for finance, but the posting says the same architecture extends to chemicals, legal, and healthcare. The founding team spent 40+ combined years at Palantir leading Foundry's core systems: Ontology, Fusion, and Workshop.
What 'forward deployed' means here
This is the Palantir FDE playbook transplanted to a startup: embed on-site with lighthouse financial and research customers, then deploy, customize, and extend Kepler against their real data. You are the technical architect of the account, not a feature owner — full-stack across a Rust backend, a TypeScript/React frontend, PostgreSQL, and model-agnostic AI (currently Claude and GPT), at 30–50% travel from the New York HQ.
Comp: betting on equity, not a posted band
The board captured the seat at $200K–$280K plus employer-provided equity. Note the live Ashby posting now lists no fixed band and says comp 'scales with experience' with no stated upper limit — so treat that number as a captured data point, not a ceiling. Either way, the real compensation thesis is the equity: you are underwriting an early-stage team, not optimizing for cash.
The pedigree you're underwriting
For an early company with no public funding figure, the cap table is the diligence. The CEO built a data company to $15M ARR, sold it, then became Citadel's first Head of Business Engineering. Backers include the founders of OpenAI, Meta AI Research, MotherDuck, dbt Labs, and Square, alongside PebbleBed, Company Ventures, and Mantis VC — an unusually dense bench of deployment and data operators for a team this young.
The thesis you're joining
Kepler's bet is explicit: the model is the commodity, and the verifiable trust-layer harness is the durable product. If sophisticated finance firms will pay for traceable, auditable AI over raw model access, this is one of the highest-leverage early FDE seats on the board. If they will not, it is an unproven wager in a crowded 'AI for finance' category — the upside and the risk are the same bet.
Who thrives, and who should pass
Thrives: Foundry-style deployment engineers who like owning a customer end-to-end, are comfortable with heavy travel, and want founding-team equity exposure. Passes: anyone wanting a guaranteed salary band, a settled product, remote-only IC work, or the liquidity of a public company. This is a high-variance seat, and the ambiguity is the job, not a phase it will grow out of.
Questions candidates ask
Is Kepler's FDE role the real Palantir model or a GTM title?
The real model. It is embedded, on-site deployment work owning a customer end-to-end, built by the engineers who led Palantir Foundry's core systems. Deployment is the whole job, not a sales appendage.
What does Kepler actually build?
An 'agent harness' — a trust layer that wraps LLMs in deterministic pipelines so every output traces to source. The first product serves finance ($10B+ AUM firms); the posting says the architecture extends to legal, chemicals, and healthcare.
What's the comp?
The board captured $200K–$280K plus employer-provided equity. The live posting now lists no fixed band and says comp scales with experience, so the real upside is the equity in an early-stage team, not the cash.
How much travel, and where is it based?
30–50% travel for on-site client engagements, out of the New York City HQ. The stack is Rust (backend), TypeScript/React (frontend), PostgreSQL, and model-agnostic AI (currently Claude and GPT).
Analysis updated 2026-10-08
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