Founding FDA (Forward Deployed Architect)

Catio Forward Deployed Architect

Coding AI IDEs changed how software is built. Catio is reinventing how software is decided and governed.

As AI accelerates code, the real bottleneck has moved upstream: what to build, what to modernize, and how to make architectural decisions with speed and confidence.

Catio is the Architecture IDE — the control plane for modern software systems. We build a living model of production systems, align business goals with technical reality, and generate decision-grade insights, modernization and optimization plans, and execution-ready feature specs. Catio amplifies architects and engineering leaders the way coding copilots amplify developers. See this Demo.

Backed by Eniac Ventures, RRE, and operators from Databricks, Dropbox, Akamai, and Cerner, we're defining a new category in software and infrastructure.

The Role

We're hiring our Founding FDA (Forward Deployed Architect) to create the technical backbone of Catio's commercial motion.

This is a foundational role. You are the owner of proof and outcomes — responsible for taking customers from ambiguous business and product objectives and constraints to validated, production-ready architectures, establishing a new product category in the process.

You will work end-to-end with customers — from initial architecture discovery through proof-of-value and into real production impact. Your job is to establish deep technical trust, map complex systems and constraints, and translate them into decision-grade artifacts that unlock meaningful outcomes in real production systems.

This is a hybrid motion :

• You will directly engage senior engineering users (architects, staff+ engineers, platform teams) through both product-led entry and field-driven demand creation in close partnership with a Founding AE
• You will convert technical usage and discovery into credible proof — and carry that through to real, production-grade architectural outcomes
• You will drive that proof upward — enabling the AE and CEO to multi-thread to executive stakeholders with clear success criteria and a credible path to achieving their goals

You will operate across both technical and executive layers — working with engineers to understand real systems, and with leadership to align on modernization strategy, developer productivity, and architectural tradeoffs.

The work is deeply consultative and system-oriented — mapping real production environments, surfacing architectural tradeoffs, and guiding early implementations that prove value in production.

This role blends forward-deployed architecture, technical consulting, and early product/GTM shaping.

If you've taken ambiguous, high-stakes business and architecture problems inside complex enterprise systems — and turned them into real-world outcomes and then into repeatable patterns — you'll be set up to have outsized impact here.