Forward Deployed Engineer

Hackajob Ltd; Wallingford; On-site; GBP 70,000 - 95,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Private healthcare via Bupa with 24/7医

Life Insurance

Income protection

Pension: 4+% employee with option to +

Employee Assistance Programme

25 holidays per year

Full meals onsite in Wallingford

Team events on and offsite

Job summary

Hackajob Ltd is seeking a Forward Deployed Engineer in Wallingford to join our client’s robotics and data platform. The role demands autonomous problem solving, data interrogation across logs and telemetry, and close collaboration with engineering teams to resolve complex, multi-system issues.

You will drive end-to-end deployments, bridge WMS and ERP concerns with robot configurations, and build durable runbooks while supporting a global fleet.

Qualifications

• 4-5+ years in solutions engineering or technical operations, independently handling complex issues.
• Strong data querying skills, comfortable with SQL and time-series data.
• Hands-on experience with Grafana dashboards and metrics-driven diagnostics.
• Linux proficiency: SSH, Bash, logs, networking fundamentals.
• Cloud infrastructure (AWS or similar) and containerized deployments (Docker/Kubernetes).
• Proficiency in Python or a similar language for tooling and data analysis.
• Experience with AI-assisted development tooling (Anthropic, Google Gemini, OpenAI).
• Strong cross-functional communication, able to summarize investigations clearly.
• Willingness to travel internationally to customer sites.

Responsibilities

• Receive escalated issues from first-line support and investigate independently before routing to engineering teams.
• Navigate Grafana dashboards and internal tooling to monitor fleet health and build dashboards/alerts.
• Support new customer deployments end-to-end, including WMS/ERP integration questions and network requirements.
• Own escalation path and ensure engineers receive a structured summary of investigations.
• Communicate with customers as a trusted technical advisor and run technical workshops.
• Provide product and engineering feedback by identifying recurring failure patterns and contributing to knowledge bases.
• Develop scripts and tooling to automate repetitive investigation tasks.

Skills

Data querying

Python

Cross-functional communication

Ambiguity navigation

Data analysis

Travel willingness

Tools

Grafana

Docker

Kubernetes

AWS

gRPC

Job description

Our client is a warehouse robotics and data company.

Forward Deployed Engineer

We believe that real-time data will revolutionise the logistics industry. We are building the ultimate data insights platform that provides companies with unprecedented access to their operations through autonomous data capture and digital twins.

As a Forward Deployed Engineer at our client, you will sit inside the engineering organisation as an intelligent interface layer between our various engineering teams. Our client operates with a global fleet of autonomous robots, supported by a 24/7 first-line support team. The Forward Deployed Engineer sits above that layer, taking ownership of complex, ambiguous issues and driving them to resolution or to the right team. You will be one of our client's first Forward Deployed Engineers, representing our client at the highest level in customer environments and helping to define how this function operates as we scale.

This is a technically demanding role for someone who is as comfortable spotting patterns across weeks of telemetry data as they are at supporting a new customer deployment on the ground. You will query data across logs, databases, and observability tooling, interpret point cloud scan data, and navigate Grafana, AWS, and a range of robotics-specific tooling to investigate issues and understand their root cause. Crucially, you will also use what you learn to improve things - identifying recurring failure modes, feeding structured insights back into the engineering teams, and raising the platform's reliability across our global fleet. You will also support new customer deployments end-to-end, bridging WMS and network integration questions with robot operational and perception configuration requirements.

The right person is defined by their investigative instinct and technical curiosity, not their robotics or logistics background. Domain knowledge is built on the job through close collaboration with the engineering teams.

Key Responsibilities

• Cross-functional Triage & Investigation: Receive escalated issues from the first-line support team and investigate independently before routing to the relevant engineering teams. Query telemetry data, robot logs, AWS infrastructure, internal tooling and databases - including scan and point cloud data where relevant - to narrow the blast radius of a problem and form a view on root cause before pulling in specialist teams.
• Observability & Monitoring: Navigate Grafana dashboards and internal tooling to monitor fleet and site health. Build or extend dashboards and alerting that improve visibility into system performance across deployed sites. Use telemetry data proactively to identify issues before they surface as customer complaints.
• New Customer Deployment Support: Work within customer systems to provide white glove deployment support for our client platform end-to-end, covering WMS and ERP integration queries, network and connectivity requirements, robot operational setup, and perception feature configuration. Act as the cross-functional point of contact who can answer or route questions across the full our client system.
• Intelligent Escalation & Routing: Own the escalation path from first-line support through to the right engineering team. Ensure that when specialist engineers are brought in, they receive a well-structured summary of what has already been investigated, what has been ruled out, and the most likely failure domain.
• Customer Communication: Act as a trusted technical advisor to strategic customers throughout deployment and into long-term steady-state operation. Build strong, lasting relationships with customer engineering and operations stakeholders, proactively identifying new opportunities to drive value throughout the lifecycle of an engagement. Run technical workshops and training sessions that drive lasting adoption. Produce clear, professional documentation covering deployment architectures, integration designs, and operational runbooks.
• Product & Engineering Feedback: Identify recurring failure patterns across sites and translate them into structured product and engineering feedback. Contribute to internal knowledge bases and runbooks that reduce investigation time for future issues.
• Tooling & Automation: Write scripts and tooling that automate repetitive investigation or deployment tasks. Contribute to reusable frameworks that improve the efficiency and consistency of the FDE function as the team grows.

Required Qualifications & Experience

• 4-5+ years of professional solutions engineering or technical operations experience, with a demonstrated ability to advise customer setups and investigate and diagnose complex, multi-system problems independently.
• Strong data querying skills: comfortable writing SQL, navigating time-series telemetry data, and pulling structured insight from large, noisy datasets.
• Hands-on experience with observability tooling such as Grafana, including building dashboards and using metrics data to diagnose production issues.
• Comfortable working in Linux environments: SSH, bash scripting, log analysis, and networking fundamentals.
• Experience with cloud infrastructure (AWS or equivalent), containerised deployments with Docker and Kubernetes, and modern data pipeline tooling.
• Proficiency in Python or an equivalent scripting language for investigation tooling, automation, and data analysis.
• Hands-on experience with AI-assisted development tooling (Anthropic, Google Gemini, OpenAI, or similar).
• Strong cross-functional communication skills: able to summarise a complex technical investigation clearly for both engineering teams and customer stakeholders.
• High agency with an ability to navigate ambiguity. Comfortable forming and defending an independent view in complex, multi-system situations and driving issues to resolution without close direction.
• Willingness and ability to travel internationally to customer sites across our client's global deployment footprint.

Nice to Have

• Familiarity with robotics systems, ROS2, or point cloud / LiDAR data, or genuine curiosity and aptitude to learn quickly on the job.
• Experience with robotics visualisation tooling.
• WMS or ERP integration experience (SAP, Manhattan, Oracle WMS, or similar).
• Exposure to real-time messaging protocols such as Zenoh, MQTT, or gRPC.
• Consulting or structured delivery experience, with familiarity with the discipline of client accountability and project-based delivery.

Benefits

Starting from the interview process and continuing into your career with us, you will be working by our four Operating Principles:

• Performance: High standards, outstanding results,
• Impact: Big challenges, bigger results
• Commitment: All in, every time
• One team: One mission, shared success

Joining our team and company isn't just about expertise; it's about embracing uncertainty with ambition. We're crafting world-changing solutions, fueled by a passion to redefine what's possible. We will look for you to help create and shape the future of logistics solutions through our products, our culture and our shared vision.

You will also receive:

• Private healthcare via Bupa with 24/7 medical helpline
• Life insurance
• Income protection
• Pension: 4+% employee with option to opt into salary exchange, 5% employer
• Employee Assistance Programme - mental wellbeing, financial and legal advice/support
• 25 holidays per year
• Full meals onsite in Wallingford
• Fun team events on and offsite, snacks of all kinds in the office

AAP/EEO Statement

Our client provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment. It prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, colour, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by local laws. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation and training