Forward Deployed Engineer

NTT DATA; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Learning & development

Flexible work options

Job summary

NTT DATA is seeking a Forward Deployed Engineer to lead customer engagements from discovery to production value. You will work directly in client environments, aligning business outcomes with AI, data, and platform solutions, while shaping opportunities into deliverable work.

Expect to collaborate with enterprise clients, partners, and internal teams to craft pragmatic delivery routes and measurable value, including bespoke AI delivery and asset reuse.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of relevant experience in software or AI engineering, architecture, or consulting.
• Experience with enterprise customers and senior stakeholders.
• Experience leading discovery, problem framing, and solution shaping.
• Experience creating prototypes or technical experiments to validate assumptions.

Responsibilities

• Partner with customers and stakeholders to understand business objectives, workflows, outcomes, and success measures.
• Lead discovery, assessment, and solution-shaping activities translating ambiguous needs into opportunities.
• Establish outcome hypotheses, success measures, and customer ownership before investment decisions.
• Create or direct rapid prototypes, proof points, experiments, and demonstrations to test value and feasibility.
• Assess feasibility across AI, data, integration, architecture, security, privacy, and operational readiness.
• Shape opportunities into production-ready work with architecture direction, backlog, and mobilization needs.
• Build trusted relationships with senior stakeholders and cross-functional teams to enable delivery.
• Collaborate across engineering, product, delivery, and operations to orchestrate necessary capabilities.
• Analyze and resolve complex business, technical, and operational challenges using evidence and structured problem solving.
• Identify high-value use cases by combining domain context, stakeholder insight, and technology capability.

Skills

Enterprise software engineering

Solution architecture

Stakeholder management

Discovery & problem framing

Prototyping & experiments

Business value focus

Tools

AI Studio

AI Factory

Job description

The Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) is a senior, customer-facing practitioner who connects customer needs, measurable business outcomes, and technology solutions. Working directly within customer environments, the FDE partners with business and technical stakeholders to understand complex challenges, reduce ambiguity, make opportunities tangible, and establish a credible path from idea to production value.

The FDE combines depth in a relevant specialist discipline with broad knowledge of company and partner platforms, products, accelerators, and reusable assets. They apply domain context, technical judgement, and commercial awareness to identify high-impact opportunities and determine the most appropriate route to the customer outcome, including bespoke AI delivery, product capabilities, platform or infrastructure services, and reuse of existing assets.

The FDE acts as the persistent outcome thread between customer stakeholders and internal engineering, product, architecture, delivery, and operations teams. They shape validated opportunities into delivery-ready work, remain connected through implementation and adoption, and use customer feedback and production evidence to guide improvement without replacing the accountable production delivery or managed service teams.

Combining domain understanding, technical credibility, strong client emotional intelligence, and outcome leadership, the FDE operates independently in ambiguous enterprise environments and is trusted to lead complex customer engagements. The role requires hands-on problem solving, sound judgement, effective stakeholder influence, and the ability to orchestrate the right capabilities while maintaining focus on measurable customer value and scalable delivery.

What you’ll be doing:

• Partner with customers and stakeholders to understand business objectives, workflow challenges, desired outcomes, and the measures that will demonstrate success.
• Lead discovery, assessment, and solution-shaping activities that translate ambiguous business needs into clear, prioritised opportunities.
• Establish outcome hypotheses, success measures, key assumptions, and customer ownership before recommending material investment or progression.
• Create or direct rapid prototypes, proof points, experiments, and demonstrations that test the assumptions most critical to value and feasibility.
• Assess solution feasibility across AI, data, integration, architecture, security, privacy, Responsible AI, operational readiness, and cost considerations.
• Shape validated opportunities into production-ready work, including target workflow, architecture direction, prioritised backlog, dependencies, acceptance direction, estimates, and mobilisation requirements.
• Build trusted relationships with technical, business, and senior stakeholders, providing clear guidance and constructive challenge throughout customer engagements.
• Collaborate across engineering, architecture, product, delivery, operations, industry, transformation, and account teams to orchestrate the capabilities required for successful outcomes.
• Analyze and resolve complex business, technical, and operational challenges using sound judgement, evidence, and structured problem-solving.
• Identify high-value use cases by combining domain context, stakeholder insight, technology capability, feasibility, and measurable business impact.
• Determine the most appropriate delivery route, including AI Studio, company products, AI Factory, transformation services, partner capabilities, reuse, further validation, or stop.
• Maintain the outcome thread as work moves into delivery by validating major decisions, assumptions, user feedback, adoption needs, and continued alignment to the intended value.
• Capture field feedback, implementation learning, defects, feature requests, customer signals, and reusable patterns from customer engagements.
• Contribute to internal IP, accelerators, reference architectures, implementation playbooks, reusable assets, and continuous improvement of the Forward Deployed and AI Studio methods.
• Provide guidance, mentoring, and knowledge sharing to FDE Candidates and delivery practitioners to strengthen capability and successful outcomes.
• Role may require working at customer sites, company offices, or hybrid delivery locations depending on engagement needs.

What experience you’ll bring:

• Typically 8+ years of relevant experience in software or AI engineering, solution architecture, consulting, customer engineering, product engineering, industry transformation, technology delivery, or related disciplines, with equivalent demonstrated depth considered.
• Significant experience working directly with enterprise customers and building credibility with business, technical, and senior stakeholders.
• Experience independently leading discovery, problem framing, solution shaping, or complex customer workstreams in ambiguous environments.
• Experience creating or directing prototypes, proof points, technical experiments, or working solutions to validate customer and technology assumptions.
• Experience shaping and delivering enterprise technology solutions involving architecture, data, integration, security, deployment, and production constraints.
• Experience applying domain or functional context to customer workflows, constraints, KPIs, value drivers, and solution decisions.
• Experience connecting technology decisions to measurable customer outcomes, adoption, business value, risk reduction, operational efficiency, or customer experience.
• Experience collaborating with product, engineering, platform, industry, transformation, delivery, and business teams to determine the right solution and delivery route.
• Experience evaluating build, buy, reuse, product, partner, and platform options pragmatically rather than defaulting to bespoke implementation.
• Experience operating within complex enterprise environments and navigating dependencies across technology, data, governance, operations, and customer organizations.
• Experience operating independently, exercising sound judgement, influencing decisions, and maintaining momentum through uncertainty and changing priorities.
• Experience capturing reusable patterns, field feedback, lessons learned, methodologies, accelerators, or other assets that improve future delivery.
• Experience providing guidance, mentoring, peer review, or knowledge sharing to colleagues and developing practitioners.

Who we are:

At NTT DATA, you have endless opportunities to think big, act bold and take ownership. As a $30+ billion business and technology services, AI and digital infrastructure leader, we co-innovate solutions with clients and partners globally for business and societal impact. Serving 75% of the Fortune Global 100, with experts in over 70 countries, we encourage experimentation and recognize great work. Proudly a Global Top Employer, NTT DATA is part of NTT Group, which invests over $3 billion annually in R&D. Make this the place where you grow.

What we’ll offer you:

We offer a range of tailored benefits that support your physical, emotional, and financial wellbeing. Our Learning and Development team ensure that there are continuous growth and development opportunities for our people. We also offer the opportunity to have flexible work options.

You can find more information about NTT DATA UK & Ireland here: https://uk.nttdata.com/

We are an equal opportunities employer. We believe in the fair treatment of all our employees and commit to promoting equity and diversity in our employment practices. We are also a proud Disability Confident Committed Employer - we are committed to creating a diverse and inclusive workforce. We actively collaborate with individuals who have disabilities and long-term health conditions which have an effect on their ability to do normal daily activities, ensuring that barriers are eliminated when it comes to employment opportunities. In line with our commitment, we guarantee an interview to applicants who declare to us, during the application process, that they have a disability and meet the minimum requirements for the role. If you require any reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process, please let us know. Join us in building a truly diverse and empowered team.