Forward Deployed Engineer

About the company

Our client is a fast-growing software company.

The role

Raydar is recruiting for this role on behalf of our client. Lead hands-on technical engagements with enterprise clients, spending time on site early on and then checking in periodically. The work combines software development, delivery ownership and regular communication with senior stakeholders, along with turning client-specific work into components other projects can reuse.

What you'll do

• Take charge of each client engagement from the outset, working to an agreed plan and set of deliverables.
• Meet with client operators and executives to chart how work gets done and spot the unusual cases that complicate it.
• Own technical choices, schedules, status updates for senior stakeholders and day-to-day client communication.
• Hold firm when necessary and explain difficult tradeoffs in plain terms.
• Develop services, data pipelines, system integrations and applications that automate manual work and reduce mistakes.
• Link enterprise systems and disorganized data sources so that both people and automated agents can draw on them.
• Guide each rollout from kickoff through launch and into the period after, validating with real-world cases, investigating faults and determining where safeguards or manual review belong.
• Convert patterns seen across clients into common, reusable components so each new rollout moves faster.
• Partner with technical leadership, the wider team and client stakeholders.

What we're looking for

• At least 4 years of professional software engineering, including shipping and operating live systems, ideally with exposure to client-facing or embedded delivery work.
• Hands-on production coding in Python or TypeScript, along with SQL.
• Experience connecting with enterprise platforms, such as cloud services, data warehouses, relational databases or ERP systems.
• Solid grounding in backend, data, infrastructure or applied AI work, including responsibility for architectural decisions.
• A track record of taking deployments from start to finish and shaping ambiguous needs into tools that people adopt.
• Ease working alongside enterprise operators and senior leaders, and sorting through disorganized data and older systems.
• Background at an early-stage startup or a leading-edge technology company.
• Based in, or ready to relocate to, New York City or the San Francisco Bay Area for on-site work.
• Willingness to travel for in-person client work.
• Candidates with exceptional strength in either technical depth or client-facing presence are welcome if they can develop the other side.

Bonus points

• Previous forward-deployed engineering or deployment strategy experience at a respected company in that space.
• Experience as a technical founder or founding engineer.

Benefits

• Health, dental and vision coverage

Location and work model

• San Francisco, California, United States or New York City, United States
• On-site
• Significant travel to client sites
• Full-time

Compensation, as the posting describes it

• Equity