Senior Forward Deployed Engineer

About Buzz Solutions
Buzz Solutions builds visual AI for the power grid. Our PowerAI platform turns utility inspection imagery — drone, helicopter, and fixed camera — into operational intelligence, analyzing an image in under a second instead of the one to two minutes it takes a human reviewer. We work across transmission, distribution, substations, and solar, helping some of the largest utilities in North America catch failing components before they become outages and compress inspection cycles that once ran for years.
We recently closed a $20M Series A to accelerate our products. We're an early growth-stage company with a small team and a problem that doesn't wait: load is growing, storm seasons keep arriving, and most of the largest machine ever built is still inspected by eye.
About the Role
This is our first Forward Deployed Engineer — a hands-on technical partner embedded with customers and our go-to-market team, and a bridge between Sales, Product, and Engineering.
Before the deal, you're scoping: on discovery calls with utility engineering and operations teams, sizing what an implementation actually takes, running pilots, and clearing the technical objections that stall a sales cycle. After the deal, you're deploying: standing up PowerAI in customer environments, building the integrations into the systems they already use, and leaning on AI workflows to deliver in weeks what traditionally took months.
This is a hands-on role, not a program or product management one. You'll be in the systems, writing the integration, and on the call with the customer's engineers. Nobody hands you a spec, and you don't hand one to someone else.
The role exists for two reasons. Our customers need a technical counterpart who can move at their pace and build alongside them. And the patterns you uncover in the field should make Buzz stronger: solve customer-specific problems quickly, then turn recurring needs into reusable deployment capabilities and clear input for the core product.
Roughly 80% of your time is customer-facing, split across pre-sales scoping and deployment. The remaining 20% points inward: building reusable deployment tooling and AI agents and translating field patterns into product and engineering improvements.
You'll report directly to our CTO and work in tight partnership with Sales, Product, Solutions, and core Engineering. As our first FDE, you'll help define how the function operates and lay the foundation for a broader Forward Deployed Engineering team as we scale.
What You'll Do
Pre-sales partnership
Ride alongside Sales as the technical partner. Join discovery calls, understand the customer's inspection workflow and data reality, and translate it into what a Buzz deployment looks like for them.
Scope and size implementations before anything is signed — integration effort, data requirements, timeline, and what's genuinely in and out of reach.
Run pilots and proofs of value that prove the platform against the customer's own imagery and assets, not a canned demo.
Clear technical objections. Handle architecture questions, security review, and the data-handling scrutiny that comes with regulated utility buyers.
Deployment and Implementation