Forward Deployed Engineer

Valiant Technologies LLC; Austin (TX); On-site; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Valiant Technologies LLC seeks a Lead Developer to bridge architecture and offshore delivery while upholding code quality and Charter standards. You will contribute code directly about half the time and lead technical ownership, delivery coordination, and offshore enablement through strong Python backend work.

The role emphasizes hands-on expertise in FastAPI/Flask, asynchronous patterns, and REST/OpenAPI design, with a focus on cross-team collaboration, architectural guidance, and robust

Qualifications

• Proven hands-on experience leading a development team.
• Deep backend Python skills (FastAPI/Flask, async, Pydantic, REST API design).
• Ability to translate architecture decisions into actionable specs for offshore team.

Responsibilities

• Translate FDE-defined architectural decisions, designs, and product requirements into detailed technical specifications and user stories consumable by the offshore development team.
• Serve as the primary escalation point for offshore developers encountering technical blockers.
• Participate in sprint ceremonies with the offshore team, bridging time zone gaps with asynchronous documentation and recorded walkthroughs.
• Coordinate with the FDE on priorities, scope changes, and technical direction; relay context and decisions to the offshore team.
• Own day-to-day technical decisions for the team's area: implementation approach, internal design, refactoring, and production support strategy.
• Conduct code reviews for all offshore-produced work, ensuring compliance with Charter coding standards, constraints, and CI/CD pipeline requirements.
• Keep technical debt visible and advocate for engineering time to address it.
• Lead the technical response to incidents — debugging, root cause analysis, and durable fixes.
• Own operational health for the team's area: monitoring, alerting, on-call health, and runbooks.
• Drive release readiness and track post-release outcomes with the Product Owner and customers.

Skills

Technical leadership

Backend Python

API design

Cross-team coordination

CI/CD knowledge

Tools

FastAPI

Flask

Pydantic

REST API

OpenAPI 3.0+

Job description

This Lead Developer serves as the technical bridge between our Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE)and the offshore development team. The role translates high-level architectural direction and product requirements into actionable, well-scoped work for offshore delivery, while maintaining code quality, architectural compliance, and alignment with Charter engineering standards.

This is a hands-on technical leadership role, aligned to the Charter Software Engineering Team Lead model. Roughly half the time is spent contributing code directly; the rest is spent on technical ownership, delivery coordination, and enabling the offshore team. The lead leads through technical context and influence, not formal management authority.

The core of this role is a strong hands-on technical engineer with real leadership experience. The two things that matter most are (1) demonstrated technical leadership of a development team and (2)deep backend Python skills (FastAPI/Flask, async, Pydantic, REST API design).

• Translate FDE-defined architectural decisions, designs, and product requirements into detailed technical specifications and user stories consumable by the offshore development team


• Serve as the primary escalation point for offshore developers encountering technical blockers


• Participate in sprint ceremonies (planning, daily standups, reviews) with the offshore team, bridging time zone gaps with asynchronous documentation and recorded walkthroughs


• Coordinate with the FDE on priorities, scope changes, and technical direction; relay context and decisions to the offshore team

Technical Ownership

• Own day-to-day technical decisions for the team's area: implementation approach, internal design,refactoring, and production support strategy


• Apply architectural standards in practice; push back when direction does not fit real-worldconstraints


• Represent the team in architecture and cross-team technical conversations


• Set expectations for code review, testing, documentation, and production readiness


• Conduct code reviews for all offshore-produced work, ensuring compliance with Charter codingstandards, constraints, and CI/CD pipeline requirements


• Maintain and enforce adherence to contract-first API design (OpenAPI 3.0+ specs authored beforeimplementation)


• Keep technical debt visible and advocate for engineering time to address it


• Lead the technical response to incidents — debugging, root cause analysis, and durable fixes


• Own operational health for the team's area: monitoring, alerting, on-call health, and runbooks


• Drive release readiness and track post-release outcomes with the Product Owner and customers

We are an equal opportunity employer. All aspects of employment including the decision to hire, promote, discipline, or discharge, will be based on merit, competence, performance, and business needs. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, marital status, age, national origin, ancestry, physical or mental disability, medical condition, pregnancy, genetic information, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, citizenship/ immigration status, veteran status, or any other status protected under federal, state, or local law.