Graduate Student, Forward Deployed Engineer

Ascendance Foundry (AF) is recruiting for its W27 (January–April 2027) Graduate Fellowship: a paid, four-month placement with an industry client, mentorship from industry experts, and training in AI fundamentals and practical skills. This posting is for the Forward-Deployed Engineering (FDE) track, where Fellows build, deploy, and maintain AI solutions embedded within a client's engineering team.

About the Role

AF places Fellows directly inside a client's team to solve a mission-critical problem over a four-month term. As a Forward-Deployed Engineering Fellow, you'll build, deploy, and maintain AI solutions embedded with a client's engineering team, shipping real features and automations - not a side project.

You'll complete AF's three-module course alongside the placement:

1. AI & AI Programming Essentials: AI-assisted software development: design, build, test, and improve applications and automations on strong engineering fundamentals.

2. Customer Success & Product Management Essentials: Identifying high-value problems, translating customer needs into technical solutions, managing stakeholders, and driving adoption.

3. Infrastructure, DevOps & Security: Cloud infrastructure, CI/CD, enterprise integrations, cybersecurity, and data privacy.

Weekly mentorship from industry experts runs throughout, alongside the same stand-ups, demo days, and Q&As as AF's core Fellowship. In month 3, AF and the client discuss converting the placement into a full-time offer.

Who You Are

• Finishing (or recently finished) a Master's or PhD: This is your final year, and you're ready to move straight into industry after the fellowship, not back into academia.

• Comfortable with some programming (Python or similar): You don't need to be a professional software engineer, but you can wrangle data and ship something that runs.

• Genuinely curious: You dig into why a result looks the way it does.

• High agency: You take ownership of ambiguous problems rather than waiting to be told the next step.

• Ready to work directly with a client team in a fast-paced, outcomes-driven setting.

Types of Projects Available

The types of projects available vary from term to term, depending on the needs of our clients, but generally fall into three broad categories: a) Strategy & Management Consulting, b) Analytics & Data Science, and c) Custom Application Development. While not all projects available to Fellows will be finalized and contracted by the Match date, here is a representative sample of projects we are working on now. In addition, there will be at least one opening focused internally on improving our educational programming and expanding our reach with industry.

• Project 1 - Building an oil blending optimizer and cloud infrastructure pipelines for a hydrocarbon optimization firm: Modernize core operations by building a data-driven oil blending optimizer supported by scalable cloud infrastructure pipelines. Work involves turning manual blending decisions and QC checks into automated, cost-efficient, and specification-compliant processes. Fellows will help design the optimization engine, build data pipelines, and develop technical and commercial strategies for clients and investors.

• Project 2 - Building accounting and project management automations for a mid-sized manufacturing company: Help a mid-sized Canadian manufacturing company develop its automation strategy from the ground up, focusing on accounting and project management functions to enable accurate pricing, forecasting, and efficient delivery.

• Project 3 - Building and managing Ascendance Foundry's proprietary trading fund: Help manage a proprietary trading fund that tests and executes various trading strategies (medium- to long-term bets on secular trends, event-based strategies, etc.).

• Project 4 - Building a sales and coaching agent for Ascendance Foundry: Build an AI agent that teaches prospective clients how to design and build custom automations with small strike teams of SMEs and FDEs. This agent will drive new sales and guide existing Fellow-client teams.

Job Responsibilities

Responsibilities vary with project placement, but Fellows will grow skills across all of the following areas:

• Custom Application Development: Support coding, testing, and debugging of application features while assisting with research, documentation, and deployment in an agile environment.

• Analytics & Data Science: Assist with data collection, cleaning, and analysis, while supporting model and visualization development using statistical and machine learning techniques.

• Strategy & Management Consulting: Support market research, company analyses, financial evaluations, deck and proposal preparation, and client workshop organization.

Compensation & Benefits

All Ascendance Fellows receive non-negotiable compensation of $15,000 for the 4-month term along with the educational programming. As part of the Ascendance Foundry alumni network, you maintain access to weekly expert seminars and the annual conference. Optional part-time consulting opportunities at higher rates are offered to top alumni to mentor students and support future projects.

Mitacs Funding

This placement may be eligible for funding through Mitacs (the Canadian program co-funding graduate internships connecting academic research with industry). Where eligible, this can supplement the fellowship stipend and strengthen support from universities and supervisors. Ask about eligibility when applying.

How to Apply

Submit a combined resume and transcript through the portal, or email ethan@ascendancefoundry.com. Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis for the W27 (January–April 2027) cohort.