Forward Deployed Engineer

Cranston is building the AI back office for accounting firms, combining the judgment of experienced operators with the leverage of AI agents and reliable software.

We automate the most complex manual workflows inside CPA firms: tax preparation, bookkeeping, document collection, cleanup, review, close, and client operations.

Cranston is already deployed with accounting firms across the country, helping them serve more clients, reduce bottlenecks, and give their best people time back for higher-value work.

About the role

As a Forward Deployed Engineer at Cranston, you rebuild how accounting firms get work done.

You are not measured by lines of code or technical complexity for its own sake. You are measured by whether CPA firms can trust Cranston to handle real back-office work: tax prep, bookkeeping, client requests, cleanup, review, close, and practice management.

You will own customer workflows end to end, from discovery through production rollout. That means sitting with partners, preparers, reviewers, bookkeepers, and firm operators; understanding how work moves across QuickBooks, tax software, portals, email, spreadsheets, and client documents; and turning that messy reality into reliable, reviewable systems.

You will replace manual workflows that firms currently run with staff, offshore teams, spreadsheets, portals, and disconnected tools. The output has to be good enough for real accounting work: source-linked, auditable, consistent, and ready for human review.

Responsibilities

• Write code and build production-grade workflows using Cranston’s agent platform and product primitives, ensuring every output meets the quality and reliability bar for real accounting work.
• Conduct deep process discovery with CPA firms, breaking complex workflows across tax, bookkeeping, client requests, cleanup, review, and close into precise, automatable steps.
• Architect implementations that work consistently across high-volume, business-critical firm operations, with source-linked outputs and clear review paths.
• Iterate closely with customers, accountants, operators, and engineering to move workflows from pilot to production.
• Navigate customer organizations and communicate clearly with stakeholders from bookkeepers and preparers to firm partners and owners.
• Identify and codify repeatable deployment patterns, contributing what you learn back into Cranston’s core product and agent platform.
• Build long-term customer relationships and proactively identify new automation opportunities across each firm.
• Grow accounts by expanding Cranston from one workflow into the broader operating layer for the firm.

You may be a good fit if you have

• experience in a technical, customer-facing role such as Forward Deployed Engineer, Product Engineer, Technical Program Manager, consultant, or technical founder.
• strong programming skills and have shipped production applications, serious internal tools, or customer-facing automation.
• high agency and can navigate ambiguity in messy customer environments where the problem is not handed to you cleanly.
• a people-facing disposition - you enjoy building relationships, running discovery, and doing more than writing code behind a ticket.
• an ownership mentality and are willing to do whatever it takes to make deployments successful.
• good communication skills - to clearly enough to explain technical tradeoffs, earn trust with non-technical stakeholders, and keep a deployment moving.
• comfort using AI coding agents as your main implementation tool and holding their output to a high bar.

Nice to have

• Experience in accounting, finance, tax, audit, professional services, or another workflow-heavy enterprise vertical.
• Previous work in customer-facing engineering, implementation, solutions, or consulting roles.
• Previous founder experience or meaningful ownership at an early-stage startup.

Why Cranston

Cranston was founded by Sean O’Bannon and Max Minsker to rebuild the accounting firm back office from the ground up.

Sean previously built ERP and ML systems and at ReMatter and Databricks, seeing how much labor still sits on top of even the best systems of record. Max ran an accounting firm that filed 10,000+ tax returns and saw the same problem from inside the work itself: firms losing their best hours to document chasing, data entry, reconciliations, cleanup, and handoffs.

Our view is that the next generation of accounting firms will not run on bigger offshore teams or more disconnected point solutions. They will run on AI agents that can understand firm context, do the repetitive prep work, and leave the judgment calls to experienced accounting professionals. We are building that back office: the system that helps CPA firms take on more work, serve clients faster, and give accountants their time back.

• We are rebuilding the back office for one of the most important professional services industries in the country.
• Accounting firms are under structural pressure: talent shortages, rising client expectations, and more work than their teams can absorb.
• AI agents can finally change the operating model of the firm, not just make another dashboard or point solution.
• $4M+ raised from investors.
• Dozens of customers, with revenue growing quickly.
• A rare chance to shape both the product and the forward-deployed motion from the beginning.