Forward Deployed Engineer

OJ Digital; Greater London; On-site; GBP 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

OJ Digital is seeking a technically senior engineer to own complex customer deployments end-to-end from scoping to rollout. You will work directly with engineering leaders and senior engineers to understand architectures, design integrations and implement production changes.

You will balance deep code work with strategic communication, leading as the technical owner for each account and shaping a growing forward-deployed engineering function. London-based, with client-facing travel as needed.

Qualifications

• 3–8 years' experience in demanding software engineering environments.
• Strong computer science fundamentals and hands-on coding ability.
• Experience in high-growth startups or similarly demanding environments.
• Evidence of exceptional technical ability (e.g., top CS degree, open-source work, or founding experience).
• Comfortable navigating and debugging large, unfamiliar codebases.
• Experience building and shipping production software, including greenfield or 0-to-1 products.
• Strong interest or experience in customer-facing engineering, integrations, deployments or technical pilots.
• Able to communicate confidently with hands-on engineers and senior engineering leadership.

Responsibilities

• Own technical customer engagements from initial scoping through integration, deployment and rollout.
• Understand complex customer architectures and design solutions within their systems.
• Write production code and ship product changes to enable deployments.
• Lead technically for each account in collaboration with senior engineering stakeholders.
• Feed customer learnings back into the product and ship improvements.
• Collaborate with the core engineering team on larger product and architectural challenges.
• Help define tooling, processes and best practices for a new Forward Deployed Engineering function.

Skills

Hands-on coding

System design

Communication with leadership

Debugging large codebases

Production software development

Customer-facing engineering

Education

Top CS degree

Tools

Git

CI/CD

Job description

London | 5 days in office | Up to 25% client travel

The Role

You'll own complex customer deployments end-to-end, working directly with engineering leaders and senior engineers to understand their architecture, design integrations and solve difficult technical problems. This isn't a traditional Solutions Architect or Sales Engineer position. You'll spend significant time writing production code, debugging unfamiliar systems and making changes to the core product alongside the engineering team.

The ideal person combines exceptional software engineering ability with the communication skills and commercial drive to own customer relationships. You'll need to be equally comfortable digging into a difficult codebase, building something from scratch and discussing technical decisions with a VP of Engineering.

• Own technical customer engagements from initial scoping through integration, deployment and rollout
• Understand complex customer architectures and design solutions that work within their systems
• Write production code and ship product changes needed to make deployments successful
• Work directly with senior engineering stakeholders as the technical lead for each account
• Feed customer learnings back into the product and personally ship improvements where appropriate
• Partner closely with the core engineering team on larger product and architectural challenges
• Help define the tooling, processes and best practices for a new Forward Deployed Engineering function

What We're Looking For

• 3-8 years' experience in demanding software engineering environments
• Strong computer science fundamentals and exceptional hands-on coding ability
• Experience working in high-growth startups or similarly technically demanding environments
• Evidence of exceptional technical ability, such as a top CS degree, strong engineering company, founding experience, competitive programming, open-source work or similar
• Comfortable navigating, understanding and debugging large, unfamiliar codebases
• Experience building and shipping production software, ideally including greenfield or 0-to-1 products
• Strong interest or experience in customer-facing engineering, integrations, deployments or technical pilots
• Able to communicate confidently with both hands-on engineers and senior engineering leadership
• Highly driven, resourceful and comfortable taking ownership of difficult, ambiguous problems
• Happy spending the majority of the role working directly with customers while remaining deeply hands-on technically