Forward Deployed Engineer

Forward Deployed EngineerWe're looking for a Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) to embed with strategic enterprise customers after the sale and turn ambitious platform commitments into production outcomes.This is a hands-on engineering role—not a traditional consulting, project management, or customer success position. You will work directly inside complex customer environments to understand business and technical goals, design the right solution, write production-quality code, deploy and integrate NexusOne, and help customer teams operate it successfully. You will move between a customer's architecture room, a codebase, a Kubernetes cluster, and an executive status discussion without losing the thread.Our customers often operate large, regulated data estates with strict requirements around security, governance, resilience, performance, and data sovereignty. Their environments may span legacy platforms, cloud data systems, mainframes, warehouses, lakehouses, and AI applications. The work is rarely turnkey. You will own hard implementation problems through resolution while turning what we learn in the field into reusable product capabilities, automation, and delivery playbooks.You will partner closely with Forward Deployed Engagement Managers, Solutions Architects, Product Engineering, Customer Reliability Engineering, and customer technical teams. The engagement manager owns the delivery program; you own the engineering build.Deliver Enterprise SolutionsEmbed with strategic customers from post-sale discovery through production rollout, stabilization, and knowledge transferTranslate business outcomes and ambiguous customer requirements into clear technical designs, milestones, and working softwareDesign, build, test, and deploy customer-specific integrations, data pipelines, platform extensions, migration utilities, and AI-enabled workflowsIntegrate NexusOne with existing enterprise systems across identity, security, governance, data catalog, storage, compute, orchestration, observability, and CI/CDSupport migrations and modernization across on-premises, private-cloud, public-cloud, and hybrid environmentsEstablish production-readiness criteria covering performance, reliability, security, disaster recovery, monitoring, and operational ownershipEngineer in the Customer EnvironmentWrite production-quality code in languages such as Python, Java, Scala, or GoDeploy and troubleshoot distributed systems on Kubernetes using infrastructure-as-code and modern delivery practicesDiagnose issues across application code, data pipelines, networking, IAM/RBAC, certificates, storage, compute, and customer infrastructureLead technical workstreams during high-severity deployment issues, communicate hypotheses clearly, and drive fact-based root-cause resolutionProduce high-quality technical artifacts: architecture diagrams, design documents, implementation plans, runbooks, test plans, decision logs, and post-incident reviewsWork effectively within enterprise controls such as architecture review boards, security assessments, change-management processes, and production-access policiesBuild Customer CapabilityPair with customer engineers and architects so they understand the solution and can operate it independentlyLead technical workshops, design reviews, whiteboarding sessions, and hands-on enablementCommunicate trade-offs and risks clearly to engineers, architects, delivery leaders, and executivesBuild trusted relationships while maintaining scope discipline and making realistic technical commitmentsCreate a clean handoff to Customer Reliability Engineering and Support when the solution moves into steady-state productionImprove the Product and the MotionBring structured field feedback to Product and Engineering: recurring deployment friction, integration gaps, reliability issues, and product opportunitiesDistinguish one-off customer requirements from patterns that should become product capabilitiesConvert repeated work into reusable connectors, reference architectures, deployment automation, tests, templates, and playbooksContribute improvements to the core platform when the right solution is product-level rather than customer-specificHelp define what world-class forward-deployed engineering looks like at NexusOne as the function scalesWhat Success Looks LikeIn the first 90 days:Build working knowledge of the NexusOne architecture and deployment modelEstablish credibility with an assigned enterprise customer and the internal engineering teamTake ownership of a defined technical workstream and ship it into a customer environmentProduce clear, reusable documentation that reduces dependence on individual engineersWithin 6–12 months:Lead major technical workstreams from design through production adoptionReduce time-to-value for customer deployments while improving quality and predictabilityEnable customer teams to operate delivered solutions with decreasing day-to-day dependence on NexusOne FDEsTurn field lessons into reusable automation, product improvements, and delivery patternsProtect Product Engineering focus by resolving customer implementation work within the forward-deployed organization and escalating only true product issuesWho You AreRequired6+ years of professional software, platform, data, or infrastructure engineering experience, including substantial hands-on ownership of production systemsExperience in a customer-facing post-sales, professional services, solutions delivery, consulting engineering, resident engineering, or forward-deployed role—or equivalent experience working directly with enterprise usersStrong programming and software engineering fundamentals, with production proficiency in at least one backend language such as Python, Java, Scala, or GoExperience with modern data infrastructure and distributed systems, such as Spark, Trino/Presto, Iceberg, Kafka, Airflow, dbt, data lakes, or cloud data platformsStrong Kubernetes and container experience, including deployment, troubleshooting, configuration, networking, observability, and operational readinessWorking knowledge of at least one major cloud platform (AWS, Azure, or GCP) and infrastructure-as-code practices such as TerraformAbility to troubleshoot across system boundaries and stay accountable until the underlying problem is understood and resolvedExperience navigating large-enterprise constraints such as security reviews, IAM/RBAC, private networking, compliance controls, change management, and multiple stakeholder groupsExcellent written and verbal communication; able to explain complex technical decisions precisely to both engineering and executive audiencesHigh agency, sound judgment, low ego, and comfort operating in ambiguous environments where the playbook is still being builtWillingness to travel to customer sites as engagements requireStrong DifferentiatorsDeep experience with one or more of Kubernetes, Spark, Trino, Iceberg, Airflow, Ranger, Keycloak, DataHub, Terraform, dbt, Airbyte, Fivetran, or adjacent technologiesExperience deploying data platforms in regulated industries such as financial services, insurance, healthcare, telecommunications, or the public sectorExperience with on-premises or hybrid-cloud deployments, including restricted-network or data-sovereignty requirementsTrack record of modernizing Hadoop, Cloudera, MapR, legacy ETL, or complex enterprise data estatesExperience building production AI or agentic applications on governed enterprise dataDemonstrated success turning bespoke customer work into reusable software, automation, reference architectures, or product featuresExperience with performance engineering, high availability, disaster recovery, security hardening, or production incident responsePrior experience in a startup or growth-stage environment where you helped create the operating model rather than inherit itWhat This Role Is NotNot a project manager role. You will plan and communicate your work, but the core expectation is to engineer and ship the solution.Not pre-sales solution engineering. You may support continuity from a proof of value, but your center of gravity is post-sale delivery and production adoption.Not reactive support. You will troubleshoot hard issues, but you are accountable for building durable solutions and creating a clean production handoff.Not bespoke consulting forever. Customer-specific work is necessary; repeated work must become automation, a playbook,