Field Application Engineer (m/f/d)

Hive Robotics is building Europe’s first full-stack orchestration platform for unmanned systems: connecting, controlling, and commanding multi-vendor drone and robot swarms. Our RF communication systems are made in Germany, deployed on active frontlines, and targeting a highly valued tactical communication market with zero sovereign alternatives today.
As our first dedicated Field Application Engineer, you are the technical face of Hive at our customers. You support deals before they close, get our systems deployed and integrated in the field, and are the first point of contact when customers hit technical issues. Most importantly, you make sure our products are actually used. You also turn feedback and what you learn in the field into better future products. You report into our CTO organization.
This role is customer-facing by design: you are based in Munich and travel to customer sites and field deployments as needed. Customer Deployments & Technical Support

• Own deployments at customer sites: installation, integration into the customer’s environment, commissioning, and acceptance
• Be the first technical point of contact for our customers: triage, troubleshoot, and resolve issues on-site and remotely, escalating to engineering when needed
• Help set up our customer portal and deliver support through it: ticket intake, triage and priorities, status communication, and response targets
• Build the knowledge behind support: reproducible issue reports, known-issue documentation, and deployment runbooks
• Define internal field test setups for optimal customer experience and execute them with the team
• Work alongside the engineering team to merge technical viability and customer requests

Adoption & Training

• Train operators and technical staff on our systems until they run them confidently without us
• Own the customer-facing documentation: user and integration guides, application notes, FAQs, and training material and keep it current with every release
• Make sure our products are actually used in the customer’s real workflow and find out why when they are not
• Run regular check-ins and deployment health reviews with active customers

Pre/Post Sales Support

• Support sales with technical demonstrations, pilots, and proofs of concept
• Capture customer requirements and constraints, and answer feasibility questions during the deal
• Contribute the technical substance of proposals and pilot plans
• Support customers technically after the sale and be their first point of contact

Field Feedback into Product

• Turn field findings into a structured feedback loop with engineering and product: what breaks, what confuses, what is missing
• Reproduce and qualify field issues so engineering works on the right problems
• Support the secure handling of sensitive and export-controlled information in everything that leaves or enters a customer site, in line with dual-use export control and end-user requirements

You do not need to tick every box or master every topic from day one. If the core is there and you have the drive to grow into the rest, we want to hear from you.
Must Have

• 5+ years in a customer-facing technical role: field application, solutions engineering, commissioning, or technical support
• Degree in engineering, computer science, or a comparable technical foundation
• Hands-on troubleshooting ability across hardware, software, and networks, in the field, without a lab behind you
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management: from the operator on the ground to the customer’s leadership and our engineering team
• Customer-first mindset: you measure success by whether the customer actually uses the product, not by tickets closed
• Willingness to travel to customer sites and work hands-on in real field conditions
• Willingness to undergo security vetting where customer-site access requires it
• Valid driver’s license
• Fluent English at least advanced German
• Based in Munich or willing to relocate

Nice to Have

• Exposure to unmanned systems, robotics, RF communications, electronic warfare (EW) environments, or command-and-control systems
• Pre-sales experience technical demos, pilots, and proofs of concept alongside a commercial team
• Prior work in defense, aerospace, security, or another regulated environment
• Experience building a field application function from scratch rather than inheriting one
• Additional languages relevant to our customer base a plus