Deployment Strategist Chicago, Seattle • In office

Silkline; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 150,000 - 225,000; Full time

Job summary

Silkline is hiring a highly analytical customer-focused engineer to own deployments from kickoff to go-live and beyond. You’ll map ERP/PLM/MES data, configure Silkline workflows, and partner with customers to ensure successful adoption.

You’ll write SQL and GraphQL queries, troubleshoot data flows, design procurement workflows, and translate field learnings into product enhancements for rapid impact across multiple customers.

Qualifications

• 4+ years in a role owning customer or operational outcomes.
• Strong analytical and quantitative background.
• Ability to decompose a messy, ambiguous situation and identify what matters.
• Writes SQL comfortably, can read API docs and debug payloads with engineers.
• Clear writing and communication; can write memos and engineering specs.
• Experience owning customer deployments/go-lives and managing expectations.
• Willingness to travel to customer sites frequently.

Responsibilities

• Own deployments from start to finish, including kickoff, discovery, data mapping, migration, configuration, and go-live.
• Connect Silkline to customer systems; map and validate data flows between Silkline and ERPs/PLMs/MES.
• Write SQL and GraphQL queries to validate migrations and troubleshoot discrepancies.
• Design workflows: approval chains, RFQ processes, supplier onboarding, PO lifecycles.
• Be the customer's technical partner after go-live and track adoption/outcomes.
• Bring learnings back to product and, if you code, contribute some of it.
• Build the deployment playbook with templates, guides, and success metrics.

Skills

4+ years experience

Analytical background

Problem decomposition

Technical fluency

Written communication

Customer ownership

Willingness to travel

Job description

About Silkline

The companies building satellites, launch vehicles, reactors, and robots are mostly limited by their supply chains, not their engineering. A single late part can hold up a launch. Buyers chase suppliers over email and spreadsheets, while the ERP shows a different story from what's actually happening on the shop floor.

Silkline is building the AI operating system for procurement. Hardware manufacturers in aerospace, defense, space, energy, and robotics use Silkline to run RFQs, POs, and supplier communication, connected to the systems they already run on: ERP, PLM, and MES.

We're backed by top venture investors and have grown our customer base 5x. The founding team is Isaac Chambers (CEO, 3x founder, ex-Deloitte) and Brent Shulman (CTO, engineering leader, ex-Palantir and Pave).

The Role

Our customers are building the critical infrastructure that powers our world, moves us, and keeps us safe. Your mission is their mission: help them build a world-class supply chain powered by Silkline.

In practice, you'll own customers from signed contract through go-live and beyond. You'll learn how a manufacturer's procurement, engineering, and finance teams actually work. Then you'll map their ERP, PLM, and MES data into Silkline, configure workflows that fit, and stay with them until Silkline is how they run.

You'll be the technical person in the room. When a customer encounters a blocker or a PO isn't syncing, you'll find out why and fix it. When you see the same problem at three customers, you turn it into product. Much of what Silkline becomes will come from what you learn in the field.

Two Paths Into This Role

Two kinds of backgrounds can be successful in this role:

1. Manufacturing systems implementer. You've spent years implementing, configuring, and maintaining ERP, PLM, or MES systems at a manufacturer, integrator, or consultancy, along with the processes around them. You know how a part moves from BOM to PO to receipt to inventory, and where workflows and data break along the way. You don't need to be a software engineer, but you're very comfortable with queries and data.
2. Forward deployed software engineer. You've worked as an FDE, solutions engineer, or customer-facing engineer and shipped production code and integrations in front of customers. You may not know manufacturing yet, but you learn domains quickly and like messy, real-world data.

What You'll Do

• Own deployments from start to finish. Run kickoff, discovery, data mapping and migration, configuration, and go-live. Manage the timeline and get procurement, engineering, finance, and IT to adopt Silkline.
• Connect Silkline to the customer's systems. Map and validate data flows between Silkline and three-letter systems: ERPs (NetSuite, Microsoft D365, SAP, Epicor, etc.), PLMs (Arena, Teamcenter, Duro), and MES (ION, Manufacturo, Boltline). Diagnose sync issues and resolve them.
• Work in the data. Write SQL and GraphQL queries to validate migrations, troubleshoot discrepancies, and build the analytics customers use to measure the impact on spend, lead times, and supplier performance.
• Design workflows. Configure approval chains, RFQ processes, supplier onboarding, and PO lifecycles to match how each customer operates, and push back when their current process is the problem.
• Be the customer's technical partner. Stay the main point of contact after go-live. Track adoption and outcomes, find expansion opportunities, and flag risk early.
• Bring what you learn back to product. Turn patterns you see across customers into clear engineering requirements. If you code, ship some of it yourself.
• Build the playbook. Our deployment process is still being written, and you'll write it: implementation templates, data mapping guides, onboarding runbooks, and success metrics.

What We're Looking For

Must have:

1. 4+ years in a role where you owned customer or operational outcomes.
2. Strong analytical and quantitative background, often in engineering, CS, math, physics, economics, or data science.
3. Problem decomposition. You can take an ambiguous, messy situation, break it into parts, and decide what matters most.
4. Technical fluency. You write SQL comfortably, can read API docs and debug a payload in Postman, and hold your own with engineers.
5. Clear writing and communication. You can write a memo a VP will act on and a spec an engineer can build from.
6. Customer ownership. You're comfortable running a meeting with a VP of Supply Chain and managing a go-live that's slipping.
7. Willingness to travel to customer sites often.

Nice to have:

1. Experience with manufacturing procurement: MRP, sourcing, supplier quality, receiving, 3-way match.
2. Hands‑on ERP, PLM, or MES implementation or integration.
3. Coding experience, especially TypeScript, GraphQL, or Postgres.
4. Background in aerospace, defense, space, or other regulated manufacturing.

Why This Role

• You'll see your work in the real world. The deployments you run will affect whether real hardware gets built and shipped on schedule.
• You'll shape the company. You'll be one of our first hires in this function, working directly with the founders and an elite software engineering team. Your playbook becomes the team's playbook.
• You'll see the whole picture. Few jobs let you see how a manufacturer's engineering, procurement, finance, and suppliers actually connect. This one does, across many companies at once.
• You can grow into leading the team. There's a clear path to leading our Forward Deployed / Customer Engineering team as we scale.

Compensation

• The base pay range for this role is $150,000 – $225,000 per year.
• The equity range for this role is .15% – .25%