Forward Deployed Engineer

EXL; New Jersey; On-site; USD 120,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

EXL seeks a Forward Deployed Engineer to work with client business and technology teams, delivering Azure-based data platforms and modern analytics solutions. The role combines coding, data engineering, solution architecture, and functional consulting to translate requirements into scalable data products.

You will own design, development, deployment, and production support, collaborating across analytics, engineering, and business stakeholders.

Qualifications

• Experience delivering cloud data platforms on Azure.
• Strong data engineering and DevOps mindset with scalable architectures.
• Ability to translate business problems into data-driven solutions.

Responsibilities

• Engage with client teams to understand objectives, KPIs, and constraints.
• Lead discovery sessions, architecture reviews, and prototypes.
• Design, build, test, deploy, and support data-driven applications on Azure.
• Develop and optimize ETL/ELT pipelines using PySpark and SQL.
• Integrate Snowflake, Databricks, and Azure services with REST APIs.
• Establish CI/CD, IaC practices with Azure DevOps and Terraform.

Skills

Azure

Python

Snowflake

Databricks

PySpark

REST APIs

CI/CD

Terraform

React

Angular

Tools

Snowflake

Databricks

Azure

React

Angular

Python

Job description

We are seeking a highly motivated Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) to work directly with client business and technology teams to solve complex business and data challenges. The role combines hands-on application development, cloud data engineering, solution architecture, and functional consulting, with primary focus on Microsoft Azure, Azure Data Factory (ADF), Snowflake, and DBT, Snowflake Cortex, PySpark.

The successful candidate will rapidly understand business processes, translate functional requirements into scalable technical solutions, and design, build, deploy, and support production-grade applications, APIs, data products, intelligent workflows, and modern analytics platforms.

What Makes This Role Different

• Work alongside client teams in high-impact environments, moving from problem discovery to production deployment.
• Combine business and functional understanding with deep engineering execution rather than operating only as an advisory architect.
• Own measurable outcomes across solution design, application development, data engineering, adoption, and production readiness.
• Build reusable accelerators and patterns while adapting solutions to client-specific workflows and constraints.

Key Responsibilities

Client Engagement & Forward Deployment

• Partner with business stakeholders, product owners, analysts, and technology leaders to understand objectives, pain points, KPIs, users, and operating constraints.
• Lead discovery sessions, functional workshops, architecture reviews, technical demonstrations, prototypes, and proof-of-concepts.
• Translate ambiguous business problems into prioritized use cases, user stories, technical designs, delivery plans, and measurable success criteria.
• Act as a trusted technical advisor and maintain close engagement through implementation, rollout, adoption, and stabilization.

Business & Functional Consulting

• Develop a strong understanding of client business processes, workflows, policies, data definitions, controls, and decision-making needs.
• Perform process analysis and identify opportunities for application modernization, workflow automation, data enablement, and AI-assisted decision support.
• Define functional requirements, acceptance criteria, business rules, source-to-target mappings, and operational scenarios in partnership with business users.
• Ensure solutions are usable, explainable, aligned with business outcomes, and supported by clear documentation and training materials.
• P&C Insurance domain experience is good to have

Application Development & Solution Engineering

• Design, develop, test, deploy, and support enterprise applications, data applications, APIs, microservices, and workflow solutions on Azure.
• Build backend services using Python etc..to develop user interfaces using React or Angular where required.
• Integrate applications with Snowflake, Databricks, Azure services, REST APIs, enterprise platforms, and third-party systems.
• Apply secure software development practices, modular design, automated testing, observability, error handling, and performance engineering.
• Own the full software development lifecycle, including requirements, design, coding, reviews, release, production support, and continuous improvement.
• Design and build scalable batch, streaming, and event-driven pipelines using ADF, Databricks, Snowflake, and related Azure services.
• Implement lakehouse, data lake, and cloud data warehouse patterns, including bronze, silver, and gold data layers.
• Develop ETL/ELT workflows, reusable ingestion frameworks, business-ready datasets, dimensional models, and data quality controls.
• Optimize Spark, PySpark, SQL, Snowflake workloads for performance, reliability, scalability, and cost.
• Implement metadata management, lineage, access controls, monitoring, reconciliation, and operational support processes.
• Design cloud-native architectures that meet security, scalability, resilience, integration, and maintainability requirements.
• Implement CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure as code, automated testing, release controls, and environment promotion using Azure DevOps, GitHub, and Terraform.
• Create solution documentation, data-flow diagrams, support playbooks, and operational runbooks.
• Drive code reviews, engineering standards, root-cause analysis, production stabilization, cross-training, and knowledge transfer.