Forward Deployed Engineer

Two Circles; City of Melbourne; On-site; AUD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Two Circles is seeking a Forward Deployed Engineer to embed with client teams and define AI-first technology solutions. You will own the technology thread across discovery engagements, estimate feasibility, and shape roadmaps before development begins.

You will collaborate with product, design and delivery leads, delivering prototypes and working proofs of concept to de-risk opportunities and accelerate timelines. Melbourne-based, on-site with clients.

Qualifications

• Around 8+ years in senior engineering roles, ideally with agency/consulting client work.
• Proven experience delivering complex web/mobile/cloud apps.
• Experience shaping and estimating work before sale or contract.
• Fluent use of AI-assisted development tooling to accelerate delivery.
• Breadth across modern stacks (Node.js, .NET, React, Next.js) and cloud platforms (AWS/Azure).
• Experience integrating CMS, CRM, identity, video streaming, data warehouses.
• Ability to engage with client executives as a technical peer.
• Comfort with ambiguity and owning a problem end-to-end.
• Excellent communication across stakeholders and teams.
• Curious, analytical mindset with attention to detail.
• Interest in sport/sports business strongly desirable.

Responsibilities

• Own the technology solution in discovery engagements and define architecture and estimates.
• Lead solution design and risk assessment for RFP responses and workshops.
• Prototype and validate AI-first approaches; deliver working proofs of concept.
• Collaborate with product, delivery, design and client teams to shape engagements.
• Educate and mentor client teams and internal stakeholders on best practices.

Skills

8+ years

Delivery of complex apps

Estimating complex work

AI-assisted development

Tech breadth (Node.js)

Tech breadth (.NET)

Tech breadth (React)

Tech breadth (Next.js)

Cloud platforms (AWS)

Cloud platforms (Azure)

CMS/CRM integration

Client communication

Tools

Node.js

React

Next.js

AWS

Azure

.NET

Job description

We are a Sports & Entertainment Technology Marketing business. We grow audiences and revenues. We do that by knowing fans best. We work with clients to help them understand and influence what their fans are doing — the way fans spend their money, the events they attend, the channels they respond to, the content they watch and more. And we use the understanding this gives us to help our clients grow.

Our platforms and services are trusted by over 1,000 clients globally, including the English Premier League, Red Bull, UEFA, VISA, the NFL, Nike and Amazon. We are over 1,000 people, based out of 15 offices, delivering work for sports and entertainment businesses of all shapes and sizes all over the world.

As part of our ongoing growth, we are expanding our technology team and seeking a Forward Deployed Engineer, a senior engineer who works alongside our clients to define and prototype the technology solutions we go on to build.

You will embed with client teams during our discovery engagements, you will build working software over presentations & proposals. What you build is intended to become the foundation of the delivery that follows, rather than being discarded at the end of the phase.

This will be the first of our FDE roles, and you will help refine how we complete tech strategy and discovery engagements in an AI-native way.

What you will actually do

Your time splits roughly three ways.

Most of your time goes on owning the technology solution in discovery. We run discovery engagements we call “getting Roadmap Ready”. Their purpose is to remove the unknowns before a development phase begins. Working alongside Product, Business Analysis, Design and Delivery, you own the technology thread: current and future state, solution architecture, product tear-downs, vendor and technology assessment, development estimation, and proofs of concept where feasibility is in question. You are the person who can say what it will take and what could go wrong, and who has built enough of it to know.

You also provide the technical weight in new opportunities, before there is a contract. Alongside our Product and Delivery Leads, that means solution design and estimation for RFP responses, and technology-focused workshops with client teams. More commonly our opportunities emerge organically (a referral, or an existing client describing a problem they are trying to solve), you are in the room with our senior product and delivery people, working through possible approaches and next steps in real time.

The third part is the one we most want someone to take on: rethinking how we run discovery, AI-first. We think discovery should be faster and more concrete than it is anywhere in our market, and that AI-assisted development is how that happens. Prototypes instead of wireframes. Working proofs of concept instead of feasibility opinions, and a clear view of where AI belongs in the client solution itself. You will help us further mature what an AI-first Roadmap Ready looks like at Two Circles and iterate it on live engagements.

The Tempo

Roadmap Ready engagements typically run between two and twelve weeks depending on scale. Within one, we want to move from a vague client problem to something working that a client can see and react to within the first days of an engagement. You will be hands-on throughout.

What success looks like at 90 days

• You have owned the technology solution work package on at least one Roadmap Ready end to end, through to client endorsement.

• You have supported at least two commercial opportunities: an RFP technical response, a client solutioning workshop, or both.

• You have built at least one working prototype a client has seen, and made a clear recommendation on whether and how it carries into build.

• You have put a first proposal in front of our technology leadership for what an AI-first Roadmap Ready looks like.

What we are looking for

• Around 8+ years in senior engineering roles, ideally including time in an agency or consulting context where you have worked directly with clients.

• Proven experience leading the delivery of complex web, mobile or cloud-based applications. We need you to have done the build, because the credibility of everything upstream depends on it.

• A track record of shaping and estimating complex technical work before it is sold or contracted, and standing behind those numbers.

• The ability to build something working, quickly. Fluent use of AI-assisted development tooling to compress the distance between an idea and a working demonstration.

• Strong technical breadth across modern engineering stacks (Node.js, .NET, React, Next.js, and cloud platforms such as AWS or Azure), with enough breadth to make sound technology choices across an unfamiliar problem rather than depth in one.

• Experience integrating the technology that runs sport and entertainment businesses: CMS, CRM, identity providers, video streaming, data warehouses and middleware. This is where most of the risk in our estimates lives, and knowing it well is what separates a credible estimate from a guess.

• The presence to be a technical peer in a room with client executives, and the judgement to know when to commit to an answer and when to say you need to test it first.

• Comfort with ambiguity, and with owning a problem that arrives undefined.

• Excellent communication, and the ability to context-switch continuously across client stakeholders, executives, delivery leads, designers, engineers and QA.

• A curious and analytical mindset, with the attention to detail we expect of everyone here.

• A keen interest in sport or the sports business, and real interest in the effect our work has on our clients’ businesses.

How the role works

You will work closely with our Solution Architects, Product Managers, Business Analysts, QA and Engineering Managers, and with our Mobile, Data and Cloud specialists as needed. You will be Melbourne-based and working on-site with clients regularly. The point of the role is proximity to the problem.

We value curiosity, clarity and attention to detail as the core capabilities of all members of our teams. If this sounds like you, we would love to hear from you.