Forward Deployed Engineer
US Delivery Hiring · USA ·
- Seniority
- C level
- Category
- Solutions engineering
- Experience
- 5+ years
US Delivery Hiring · USA ·
Sand Tech Holdings Limited · USA
Accrete AI · New York, United States
Parloa · New York Office
arena · SF Bay Area
What if your work could help prevent water loss across a city, strengthen healthcare delivery for millions of people, optimise critical energy infrastructure or turn Formula E telemetry into a better race strategy in the seconds that matter?
At Sand, Forward Deployed Engineers (FDEs) use AI, data and software to solve problems that have consequences far beyond a screen. In this role, you will work inside some of the world’s most complex operational environments, alongside the people who run them: turning messy data and ambitious ideas into solutions that deliver measurable results and improve people’s lives.
You won’t spend months building against a distant specification. You’ll get close to the problem, prototype quickly, deploy into production and see the impact of what you build.
If you want to apply advanced technology to meaningful problems; and work with exceptional colleagues who are as ambitious, curious and practical as you are, this could be the role for you.
Sand Technologies is a global Physical AI company building intelligent systems for the infrastructure society depends on.
We partner with governments, cities and enterprises to improve how essential systems operate across healthcare, water, energy, telecommunications and infrastructure. Our teams have built AI systems that help manage London’s water supply for 16 million customers, supported telecommunications planning across hundreds of cities (and islands), and developed digital healthcare platforms serving millions of people across Africa.
Our work also takes us into less conventional environments. Through our partnership with Envision Racing, we have applied AI and data science to Formula E race analysis—helping engineers process complex performance data faster and improve decision-making during highly time-constrained race weekends.
Across these projects, the principle is the same: use AI to understand the physical world, make better decisions and improve outcomes that matter.
Our mission is to harness AI to solve humanity’s most pressing challenges.
Want to know what working here is really like? Meet the Sand team on YouTube and hear directly from the scientists, engineers and leaders behind our work. Click the names below to learn more on some key team members at Sand.
Dr. Mike Flaxman
Chief Science Officer
Nomcebo Ngwamba
Product Engineering Lead
Ross McIntosh
VP of R&D
Lizette Loubser
Technical Lead
FDEs are Sand’s technical front line within our most strategic customers.
Embedded in the client’s environment, you will work alongside operators, engineers, analysts and executives to understand high-value problems, unlock and structure data, rapidly test ideas and deploy production solutions. Depending on the engagement, you could be building data pipelines, predictive models, optimisers, AI agents, decision-support tools or operational applications.
This is not traditional consulting, and it is not conventional software engineering. It is an end-to-end value-engineering role combining deep technical execution, product thinking, client partnership and commercial awareness.
You will be trusted to navigate ambiguity, identify where AI can genuinely create value and turn that opportunity into something people use.
An FDE Data Engineer still builds pipelines, and an FDE Data Scientist still builds models. The difference is that they are so close to the problem, inside the client’s environment, owning the outcome from discovery through adoption.
Dimension
Forward Deployed Engineer
Traditional Engineer
Where you work
Embedded in the client environment, with up to 70% travel
Primarily within a central or remote engineering team
Proximity to the problem
Works directly with end users and sees the operational reality firsthand
Often receives requirements through a product manager or backlog
Scope
Discovers, scopes, builds, deploys and iterates across the full solution lifecycle
Typically owns a defined component of the build
Measures of success
The client’s problem is solved and measurable value is created
The assigned component ships to specification
Starting point
Ambiguous problems, fragmented data and evolving requirements
A more clearly defined brief and technical scope
Client interaction
Builds relationships and manages technical and operational stakeholders directly
Usually has limited customer interaction
Mindset
Engineer, problem-solver, product thinker and trusted adviser
Specialist operating primarily within one technical discipline
You are likely to thrive in this role if you:
We’re looking for strong fundamentals rather than one exact technology stack. Relevant experience may include:
Experience in energy, utilities, healthcare, telecommunications, government or another asset-intensive industry is valuable, but not essential.
As part of our interview process, you'll spend time with us in person in New York — working alongside our team on a real, hands-on problem, the same way an FDE operates in the field. No slide decks, no hypotheticals: you'll build, adapt under pressure, and present your solution the way you would to a client whose operations depend on it.
At Sand, we own outcomes, not simply tasks or functions.
We bring together engineers, scientists, product builders and industry experts from across the world to solve problems that rarely fit neatly within one discipline. You may begin a week inside a customer’s operational environment, spend the next few days building and testing a prototype, and finish presenting the results to senior decision-makers or working with our platform team to turn your approach into a reusable capability.
You will have considerable autonomy, but you will not work alone. You’ll be surrounded by deeply capable colleagues who share context freely, challenge one another thoughtfully and step across conventional role boundaries when the problem requires it.
We value people who are curious enough to ask better questions, practical enough to ship, and ambitious enough to believe AI can (and should) make the systems people rely on work better.
Chaos Labs · Europe