Forward-Deployed Manufacturing Engineer

Forward Deployed Engineer

As a Forward Deployed Engineer, you'll be embedded on-site at customer factory sites — not visiting, not consulting remotely, but physically there for the stretches it takes to see a mission through. You'll use Instrumental Solve and the data it surfaces to investigate manufacturing issues, but the real work starts after the finding: knowing the specific product's architecture and build flow well enough to know what actually changed, and knowing the specific people on the floor well enough to get something done about it. Data tells you where to look; it's what you know about the product and the people that gets something fixed. Beyond the investigation work, this role gives you something harder to find: a line that's genuinely yours to run. You'll make the calls — what to fix first, how to work with the customer, what "done" looks like — without waiting on sign-off or a pre-built roadmap. You'll be the person the customer turns to and trusts, with real room to shape how things go.

Instrumental builds the manufacturing acceleration platform behind the world's most complex electronics. We capture digital exhaust and engineering context from assembly lines—images, test logs, BOM data, performance, repair cycles—and our AI engines identify insights that are difficult or impossible for human engineers to find. We accelerate the companies building the AI era by improving manufacturing yield, throughput, and ramp. NVIDIA, Meta, L3Harris, and their manufacturing partners rely on Instrumental to accelerate new product introduction and production.

We're Looking for Someone Who:

• You have real, hands-on time on a factory or contract manufacturing floor — not adjacent to it, on it. You know how a build actually runs.
• You can go deep enough on a specific product's architecture and build flow to recognize what changed and why — this matters more than general data fluency.
• You know how to find the right owner for a finding — who can actually act on it, what they're measured on, and whether there's a real window to act. A well-supported finding sent to the wrong person still goes nowhere, and you know that going in.
• You build real trust with the people on the floor and in engineering — not by reporting well, but by being present, credible, and useful over time.
• You're comfortable being physically on-site, often for extended stretches. This is a majority-travel, factory-deployed role — not a headquarters seat.
• You drive corrective action all the way to completion — you stay with a finding until it actually changes something measurable, not until it's handed off.
• You thrive in ambiguity and take ownership without waiting for perfect instructions.

What You'll Be Doing:

• Own a Mission and Deliver on It. In this role, you'll travel to customer factory sites, primarily in North America, with a specific, company-critical mission. Common missions may include setting up and integrating physical equipment and accelerating customer "time to value" by hand-tuning Instrumental algorithms and software. You'll have support from our global team, but you'll be the engineer on the ground who will own mission success.
• Build Relationships with Customer and Factory Stakeholders. While onsite, you'll endeavor to understand and build rapport with the various stakeholders who are critical to Instrumental's success and pave the way for further adoption. You'll leverage these relationships to complete your missions quickly and effectively. You'll cement a strong technical and dependable reputation for yourself and Instrumental at large.
• Leverage Instrumental's Software to Drive Value. You'll quickly become an expert in Instrumental's software and technology, including many non-customer-facing functionalities. This will enable you to quickly identify how to get the most performance out of the system – whether that's by making a physical tweak in the real-world, adding training labels, or replicating customer tests. You'll use your engineer's understanding of how our customer derive value to rapidly achieve results.

You're encouraged to apply even if your experience doesn't precisely match the job description. Instrumental offers competitive, location-based compensation. The following is a representative annual base salary range across multiple levels: $116,000-$176,000. This job is also eligible for variable compensation, and the job title at hire will be "Field Deployed Engineer". Job leveling and salary opportunity are evaluated through our interview process—we review each applicant's experience, knowledge, skills, and abilities. Instrumental's benefits include: Health, Vision, Dental, Public Transit/Commuter Plans, and Parental Leave. At Instrumental, protecting company and customer information is a shared responsibility. All employees are expected to comply with company security and privacy policies and promptly report suspected security incidents or policy violations.