Forward Deployed Engineer

Dryft; München; On-site; EUR 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Relocation support

Visa sponsorship

Job summary

Dryft is seeking a Forward Deployed Engineer to split time 50/50 between engineering and direct customer interaction. You will lead end-to-end rollouts, align IT, engineering and C-level stakeholders across Germany, the EU and the US, and shape the product backbone by translating user pain into tangible improvements.

Relocation to Munich is supported, with 10–30% travel. You should be an engineer-first professional who thrives in a high-ownership environment.

Qualifications

• 2+ years in a top-tier role or early startup environment with a technical degree
• Experience writing production code and understanding full systems
• Background in manufacturing, industrial software, supply chain is a plus
• Able to translate operator pain into product features
• Strong attention to detail and ability to ship under pressure

Responsibilities

• Lead full-stack rollouts end-to-end including scoping, onboarding, integration and training
• Design the product backbone by working with users and prototyping features
• Turn deployments into reusable product features, data models and playbooks, with growth into CPO/COO roles

Skills

Fast-paced experience

Engineer first

Industrial background

Product-minded

Quality-obsessed

Ultra-professional & detail-obsessed

Crisis communicator

Down-to-earth & relatable

Relocation

Education

Bachelor's degree in a technical field

Tools

TypeScript

React

Chakra UI

TanStack Router

TanStack Query

Vite

Python

FastAPI

Pydantic

Temporal

Postgres

dagster

AI tooling

Job description

DRYFT

Ideas only change the world when you build them at scale. That’s what Dryft is here for.

Dryft builds models that automate complex human decisions in manufacturing operations. We capture the knowledge of experienced operators across supply chain, production planning, engineering and more, simulate the consequences of their decisions, and use this understanding to help run their business. Our customers include some of the largest robotics, machine and component manufacturers in the world.

We’re a small, talent-dense team with modest roots and a love for the physical world: cars, machines, planes. Our team includes graduates from Stanford, Berkeley, CDTM and TUM, winners of Stanford TreeHacks, recipients of Fulbright & Haniel scholarships, and people who have built everything from robots and race cars to software with millions of downloads.

What matters more to us than credentials is how people work: humility, hard work, speed, kindness, deep customer care, and a willingness to take on problems others avoid. Working at Dryft is hard. You get unusual ownership early on, with real responsibility. But that’s also what makes it one of the biggest learning experiences of your life.

We’re backed by founders and operators behind some of the most legendary tech companies of our time, Tier-1 U.S. venture firms, and board members of global industrial companies.

ERPs ran the physical world for half a century. Dryft is building the intelligence layer that will power the next.

THE ROLE

As our Forward Deployed Engineer , you split your time 50/50 between engineering and customer interaction. No role will teach you more about becoming a great founder, listener & builder. One day you’re integrating a legacy ERP, the next you’re on a flight to a shop floor in Mexico, and in between you ship the fix. You’ll navigate stakeholders from IT to the C-level, all at once, and nothing really prepares you for it.

• Lead full-stack rollouts – own implementations end-to-end, from scoping and onboarding to integration and training, and align IT teams, engineers and C-level execs across Germany, the EU and the US

• Design the product backbone – work hands-on with users, translate their pain into product improvements, and prototype features yourself, ideally writing production code when needed

• Turn operations into product – every deployment becomes a blueprint for scale: you turn what you learned into reusable product features, data models and playbooks, and grow into roles like CPO or COO

This is a high-ownership, zero-handholding role, and only for someone who loves turning complexity into clarity and ships working solutions under pressure.

YOU

• Fast-paced experience – 2+ years in a top-tier role (e.g., consulting), as a founder, or as an early employee in a high-growth startup, with a technical degree or background

• Engineer first – you write production code, understand systems end-to-end, and when something breaks at a customer, you find the root cause

• Industrial background – experience in manufacturing, industrial software, procurement, supply chain or another industrial domain is a plus

• Product-minded – you listen to rants about ERP, nod wisely, and somehow turn them into product features that feel like magic

• Quality-obsessed – you hold yourself to a high bar, dive deep into problems, and care about getting it right, not just getting it done

• Ultra-professional & detail-obsessed – you earn trust with structure, polish, and docs so clean even a CTO stops asking questions

• Crisis communicator – when things get hard, people look to you; you calm an impatient exec, win over a skeptical IT leader, and still crack a joke in the middle of it

• Down-to-earth & relatable – you bond with shop-floor operators as easily as with boardroom execs, and you’ll put on the safety shoes without being asked

• Relocation – you’re ready to work onsite in Munich (we support visa), with 10 to 30% travel

TECH STACK

• FE (TypeScript): React, Chakra UI v3, TanStack Router, TanStack Query, Vite

• BE (Python): FastAPI with Pydantic v2, Temporal, Postgres with pgvector, dagster

• AI: Pydantic AI, Langfuse