Forward Deployed Engineer

Location: Seattle, WA or Chicago, IL — In Office
Compensation: $150,000–$225,000 base salary + equity
Travel: Travel to customer sites as needed
About the Opportunity
Our client is seeking a Forward Deployed Engineer to join their fast-growing technology company building AI-powered software for complex manufacturing and procurement environments.
This role combines software engineering with direct customer engagement. You will work closely with customers across industries such as aerospace, defense, space, energy, and robotics to deploy and integrate a sophisticated procurement platform into their existing technology environments.
You will own technical deployments from implementation through go-live, working directly with customer stakeholders while also writing production code, building integrations, troubleshooting APIs and data flows, and partnering closely with product and engineering teams.
This opportunity is ideal for an engineer who enjoys solving ambiguous real-world problems, working directly with customers, and seeing their technical work deployed into complex operational environments.
What You'll Do
Own technical customer deployments from kickoff and discovery through data migration, configuration, integration, and go-live.
Build and support integrations between the platform and customer ERP, PLM, MES, and other enterprise systems.
Write production-quality code and develop technical solutions to customer-specific requirements.
Map and validate data flows across systems and troubleshoot synchronization, authentication, API, and payload issues.
Write SQL and GraphQL queries to validate migrations, investigate discrepancies, and develop operational analytics.
Configure and support workflows related to procurement, supplier onboarding, approvals, RFQs, and purchase-order lifecycles.
Work directly with customer stakeholders across procurement, engineering, finance, and IT.
Serve as a technical partner throughout the customer lifecycle, identifying and resolving blockers that could affect implementation or adoption.
Translate recurring customer needs into product and engineering requirements and contribute directly to product development where appropriate.
Help build repeatable deployment processes, technical documentation, implementation templates, and onboarding playbooks.
Requirements
What We're Looking For
4+ years of relevant software engineering, forward deployed engineering, solutions engineering, customer engineering, or technical implementation experience.
Strong engineering foundation, ideally within Computer Science, Software Engineering, Mathematics, Physics, Data Science, or a related technical discipline.
Strong software development skills and demonstrated experience shipping production-quality code.
Experience with modern web application technologies. Experience with TypeScript, React, Next.js, GraphQL, and PostgreSQL is particularly relevant.
Working knowledge of APIs, including the ability to read API documentation, test endpoints using tools such as Postman, and troubleshoot authentication and payload issues.
Ability to work comfortably with complex and imperfect real-world data.
Strong communication skills and the ability to work directly with both technical teams and senior customer stakeholders.
Ability to independently own technical problems and customer outcomes from initial discovery through resolution.
Willingness to travel to customer sites as needed.
Preferred Qualifications
Strong SQL skills, including joins, aggregations, data validation, and troubleshooting queries.
Experience with GraphQL or demonstrated ability to quickly learn similar technologies.
Experience with manufacturing procurement processes such as MRP, sourcing, supplier quality, receiving, or three-way matching.
Hands-on experience implementing, configuring, or integrating ERP, PLM, or MES systems.
Experience building customer-facing integrations or solutions as a software engineer.
Experience developing reporting or analytics from operational data.
Background within aerospace, defense, space, energy, robotics, or other regulated manufacturing environments.
Previous experience in forward deployed engineering, solutions engineering, technical consulting, or deployment strategy.
Additional Requirements
This position works with ITAR-controlled and CUI data. Candidates must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident, or otherwise qualify as a “U.S. person” under applicable ITAR regulations.
Benefits
Salary: $150-$225k salary + equity
Medical/Vision/Dental sponsored at 70%
Unlimited PTO
401k with matching
Other misc benefits like OneMedical, Kindbody, TalkSpace, etc.
Opportunity to work with an elite team of entrepreneurs and engineers
Opportunity to change the world by improving global supply chains

Work arrangement
No