Forward Deployed Engineer

Forward-Deployed Engineer

We're Hitachi Vantara, the data foundation trusted by the world's innovators. Our resilient, high-performance data infrastructure means that customers – from banks to theme parks – can focus on achieving the incredible with data.

If you've seen the Las Vegas Sphere, you've seen just one example of how we empower businesses to automate, optimize, innovate – and wow their customers. Right now, we're laying the foundation for our next wave of growth. We're looking for people who love being part of a diverse, global team – and who get excited about making a real-world impact with data.

Job Description

This role is open to candidates who are local and authorized to work in Toronto or New York.

What You Will Be Doing

We are seeking a highly skilled Forward-Deployed Engineer (FDE) with deep expertise in data virtualization, hybrid cloud architectures, and AI-driven solution validation. This role partners directly with customers to design and prototype composable data and AI solutions that validate technical feasibility, performance assumptions, and measurable business value across distributed data ecosystems.

The FDE role blends hands-on engineering, limited-scope economic modeling, and customer-facing technical storytelling. The ideal candidate thrives in the field, integrating partner technologies, building working prototypes, and demonstrating GenAI and agentic AI outcomes using customer and industry datasets.

Role Boundaries & Ownership

This role focuses on proving technical feasibility and business value through hands-on prototyping and customer facing engagements.

This role is not:

• A Professional Services delivery role responsible for production implementation
• A standard Pre-Sales or Solution Architecture role focused on product configuration
• An operational or run-state ownership role

This role partners closely with:

• Sales and Solution Architecture for opportunity shaping and technical validation
• Professional Services and Managed Services for delivery and operational handoff
• Product and Engineering teams for field feedback, validation, and learning transfer

Key Responsibilities

Data Architecture & Engineering

• Design and prototype data virtualization architectures enabling unified, near real-time access to distributed data sources for validating feasibility, performance, and integration assumptions.
• Build prototype-level API-based extraction, streaming, ETL, and ELT pipelines.
• Integrate distributed query and transformation engines such as Spark, Presto, and SQL-based platforms in POV environments.
• Create reference architectures and working prototypes across AWS, Azure, GCP, private cloud, and on-premises environments.
• Perform workload and performance evaluations for compute, networking, storage, and GPU-accelerated environments.

AI, GenAI & Agentic AI Enablement

• Execute proof-of-value engagements using customer and industry datasets.
• Build AI-driven prototypes showcasing RAG, automation, and agentic workflows.
• Demonstrate AI feasibility using hybrid and GPU-accelerated environments.
• Translate prototype outcomes into technical and business value narratives.

Financial & Efficiency Modeling

• Build lightweight ROI, TCO, and cost comparison models to support POV outcomes.
• Evaluate architectural trade-offs within bounded validation efforts.
• Estimate financial impact of GenAI and agentic AI use cases.

Customer Engagement & Presales

• Translate business requirements into prototype-level architectures.
• Lead discovery sessions, technical workshops, and POV execution.
• Collaborate across sales, solution architecture, product, and delivery teams for handoff.

What You Will Bring to the Team

Technical Skills & Experience

• Strong experience with data virtualization platforms such as Zetaris, Starburst, Dremio, or equivalent technologies.
• Hands-on exposure to modern data platforms including Databricks, Snowflake, Teradata, and cloud-native data warehouses.
• Proficiency with Spark, Presto, SQL, distributed query engines, and performance optimization concepts.
• Experience building prototype-level ETL/ELT pipelines and integration workflows.
• Knowledge of API-based data integration patterns.
• Experience working in hybrid, multi-cloud, and on-prem environments.
• Familiarity with enterprise infrastructure and accelerated compute platforms from vendors such as Hitachi, Cisco, Supermicro, HPE, Dell, Pure, and NVIDIA.
• Understanding of data governance, security, and access control principles.
• Comfort operating within large-scale enterprise data ecosystems.

Preferred Qualifications

• Prior experience in forward-deployed engineering, field engineering, or customer-facing technical roles.
• Experience supporting consultative, prototype-driven, or POV-led selling motions.
• Hands-on exposure to GenAI or agentic AI solutions in validation or demonstration contexts.
• Experience leveraging industry datasets or benchmarking frameworks.
• Strong communication skills with the ability to simplify complex technical concepts.

Why This Role

This role is ideal for engineers who thrive at the intersection of deep technical engineering, customer engagement, and value validation.

As a Forward-Deployed Engineer, you will help customers prove what is possible, accelerating confidence and decision-making – while enabling clean handoff to delivery and operational teams once value and feasibility are established.

As required by the equal pay and transparency acts, the expected base salary for this position is: $125K to $270K Expected on-target earnings: $170K to $330K

The expected pay is determined based on a variety of factors including, but not limited to, depth of experience in the practice area. Employees are eligible to participate in Hitachi Vantara's bonus/variable/commission pay programs, where applicable, and are subject to the program's conditions and restrictions.

About Us

We're a global team of innovators. Together, we harness engineering excellence and passion for insight to co-create meaningful solutions to complex challenges. We turn organizations into data-driven leaders that can make a positive impact on their industries and society. If you believe that innovation can inspire the future, this is the place to fulfill your purpose and achieve your potential.

Fostering Innovation Through Diverse Perspectives

Hitachi is a global company operating across a wide range of industries and regions. One of the things that sets Hitachi apart is the diversity of our business and people, which drives our innovation and growth.

We are committed to building an inclusive culture based on mutual respect and merit-based systems. We believe that when people feel valued, heard, and safe to express themselves, they do their best work.

How We Look After You

We help take care of your today and tomorrow with industry-leading benefits, support, and services that look after your holistic health and wellbeing. We're also champions of life balance and offer flexible arrangements that work for you (role and location dependent). We're always looking for new ways of working that bring out our best, which leads to unexpected ideas. So here, you'll experience a sense of belonging, and discover autonomy, freedom, and ownership as you work alongside talented people you enjoy sharing knowledge with.

We're proud to say we're an equal opportunity employer and welcome all applicants for employment without attention to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, veteran, age, disability status or any other protected characteristic. Should you need reasonable accommodations during the recruitment process, please let us know so that we can do our best to set you up for success.