The Role
We're hiring a Senior Forward Deployed Engineer — a technically elite, customer-obsessed builder who operates as a startup within a startup.
This is not a traditional implementation or solutions engineering role. The Sr. FDE is Formant's Pathfinder: the person who goes first, goes deep, and shapes how our AI-powered platform gets adopted across some of the world's most complex industrial environments. You'll own the full arc of an enterprise engagement — from initial discovery through onsite bootcamp, POC, pilot, and production deployment — while maintaining trusted relationships from end users all the way to the C-suite.
You will be supported by a team of other FDEs and Engineers to implement the customer strategy and solution.
You'll be Formant's most direct line to what our product needs to become. The insights you surface in the field will shape our roadmap, our blueprints, and how we scale every engagement that follows.
What You'll Do
Pathfinding & Discovery
- Lead onsite discovery bootcamps with enterprise customers — living in their environment, learning their operations, and surfacing requirements that no requirements doc could capture
- Define measurable success metrics and establish clear checkpoints across POC, Pilot, and production deployment
- Translate ambiguous operational problems into concrete technical architectures and solution designs
- Build genuine buy-in with customer stakeholders at every level — from operators on the floor to engineering leads to executive sponsors
Technical Execution
- Own end-to-end technical delivery: sales engineering, solution architecture, rapid prototyping, integration with production environments, and full deployment
- Build and iterate on LLM-powered workflows, AI-assisted investigation pipelines, and automation tooling that operates under real-world constraints (latency, connectivity, hardware)
- Integrate deeply with customer systems, APIs, and existing operational infrastructure
- Produce reusable blueprints and integration patterns that accelerate all future deployments
Strategic Account Ownership
- Serve as the primary technical relationship owner for a portfolio of enterprise accounts
- Partner with Account Directors to connect technical outcomes to business value and renewal health
- Lead executive-level conversations with confidence — translating technical progress into ROI language
- Identify expansion opportunities and surface the product gaps that, if closed, unlock the next stage of the engagement
Field Intelligence & Product Influence
- Act as the feedback loop between the field and Formant's product and engineering teams
- Identify patterns across engagements and contribute to the evolving playbook, integration library, and deployment frameworks
Who You Are
Required Experience
- 5+ years in a customer-facing technical role — Forward Deployed Engineering, Solutions Architecture, Implementation Engineering, or equivalent field engineering experience
- Demonstrated ability to own complex enterprise engagements end-to-end, from discovery through production
- Experience with LLMs, AI workflows, or agentic systems in production environments
- Strong full-stack engineering skills — Python and/or TypeScript required; comfortable across the stack when needed
- Proven track record leading technical conversations with both engineering teams and senior business stakeholders
- Comfortable with significant travel for customer engagements (40–50% of the time spent in bootcamps onsite with customers)
Nice to Have
- Experience in robotics, industrial automation, or physical systems — including ROS, AMRs, manufacturing, agriculture, logistics, SCADA systems, or semiconductor fabrication
- Integrating LLMs and agentic systems with physical hardware and infrastructure
- Data curation and machine learning experience
- Background working with semiconductor, pharmaceuticals, automotive, oil & gas, electronics or other regulated verticals
- Experience building or scaling an FDE practice, onboarding playbooks, or deployment frameworks
- Startup experience — especially in a role with high autonomy and ambiguity
Who Will Thrive in This Role
- Engineers who want to be the person in the room when the hard problems get defined — not just solved
- People who find it energizing to move between a factory floor, an engineering whiteboard, and a C-suite meeting in the same day
- Builders with strong opinions, loosely held — who can design a system, prototype it fast, and throw it out when the customer teaches you something better
- People who understand that proximity to the real problem is the only sustainable competitive advantage
Salary range: $160,000–$180,000 based on experience and geographical location.
This position is remote with significant onsite customer travel. Formant currently hires in: AZ, CA, CO, IL, KS, MA, NC, NY, OK, OR, PA and TX.