Forward Deployed Engineer

NavLogic AI; Palo Alto (CA); Hybrid; USD 100,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive Compensation

Flexible Work

AI Tooling Budget

Learning & Development

Health & Wellness

Job summary

NavLogic AI is looking for a Forward Deployed Engineer in Palo Alto, California. This role focuses on leading deployments for clients in logistics, requiring strong technical ownership and engineering skills.

The ideal candidate has experience in Python and TypeScript, a customer-facing background, and is comfortable in dynamic environments. Competitive compensation and remote-friendly work culture offered.

Qualifications

• 5+ years building software in production.
• At least 2 years in a customer-facing role.
• Familiarity with cloud services.

Responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end deployments at customer sites.
• Build data connectors and pipelines.
• Configure and extend the NavLogic platform.

Skills

Python

TypeScript

SQL

REST/GraphQL APIs

EDI

SFTP

Education

Bachelor's in Computer Science or equivalent experience

Tools

AWS

GCP

Azure

Job description

NavLogic AI was founded by veterans of the supply chain and logistics industry who have spent decades navigating the complexity of global freight, warehouse operations, last-mile delivery, and demand planning. Frustrated by legacy software that lagged years behind real-world challenges, our founders set out to build the AI-native platform the industry actually deserves.

We sit at the intersection of deep operational expertise and cutting‑edge AI — applying large language models, computer vision, and predictive analytics to the messy, high‑stakes world of physical goods movement. Our customers range from regional carriers to Fortune 500 manufacturers, all looking for intelligence that works as hard as they do.

02THE OPPORTUNITY

We are looking for a Forward Deployed Engineer who can sit on a Class‑8 trailer dock in the morning, refactor a Python data pipeline by lunch, and present a Pareto chart of throughput gains to a VP of Operations by EOD. This is the role for engineers who believe software is only valuable when it changes what happens on the floor.

You will be the first NavLogic AI engineer a customer meets after they sign — embedded with their team, instrumenting their data, and turning our platform into a measurable result on their P&L. You partner closely with Product and AI Engineering to feed real‑world friction back into the roadmap. If you’ve ever delivered a Palantir‑style deployment, run a Series A solutions‑engineering team, or shipped customer‑facing tooling at a logistics tech company, you’ll feel at home here.

03WHAT YOU WILL DO

• Customer Deployment Ownership Lead end-to-end deployments at carriers, 3PLs, and Fortune 500 manufacturers — from kickoff through go‑live and value realization. You own the technical outcome.
• Data & Systems Integration Build connectors and pipelines into customer TMS, WMS, ERP, and EDI/API endpoints (SAP, Oracle, Manhattan, Blue Yonder, Project44, MercuryGate, NetSuite). Make messy data usable.
• Custom Solution Engineering Configure and extend the NavLogic platform to fit each customer’s ops — building dashboards, workflows, and AI‑assisted tooling on top of our SDK and APIs.
• On‑Site Operational Discovery Spend time in the warehouse, the dispatch room, and the dock — observe workflows, time motion, and translate operational pain into engineering specs.
• Production Reliability Instrument deployments with monitoring, on‑call rotations, and incident response. When a model regresses or a feed stalls at 3 a.m. PT, you’re the first responder.
• Roadmap Feedback Loop Be the highest‑bandwidth signal Product and AI Engineering have into customer reality. Convert what you learn into structured PRs, RFCs, and roadmap inputs — not just Slack venting.
• Reusable Accelerators Productize the patterns you encounter twice. Build templates, reference architectures, and internal libraries so the next deployment is faster than the last.
• Customer Trust & Storytelling Present technical work to customer execs in plain language; partner with PMM and Sales on case studies, ROI models, and reference calls.

04WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR

Required Qualifications

• 5+ years building software in production — at least 2 of those in a customer‑facing or forward‑deployed role (FDE, Solutions Engineer, Implementation Engineer, or similar).
• Strong engineering fluency in Python and TypeScript ; comfortable in SQL and at least one cloud (AWS, GCP, or Azure).
• Track record of shipping integrations against enterprise systems — REST/GraphQL APIs, EDI, SFTP feeds, message queues, and the gnarly edge cases each of those produces.
• Demonstrated ability to be the technical owner in a customer room : scoping, estimating, escalating, and delivering — without a PM holding your hand.
• AI‑native mindset : you use LLMs (Claude, GPT, Gemini), code‑gen agents, and AI‑assisted analysis as a first‑class part of how you work — not as a curiosity.
• Strong written and verbal communication ; you can write a clean post‑mortem and present a status update to a CIO in the same week.
• Comfortable with travel — typically 25–35% to customer sites — and with the ambiguity of an early‑stage startup.
• Bachelor’s in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent demonstrable experience.

Preferred / Nice‑to‑Have

• Hands‑on logistics, freight, warehouse, or supply‑chain technology experience — you already know the difference between a BOL and an ASN.
• Prior Forward Deployed Engineer / Solutions Architect role at a data‑platform or AI‑platform company (Palantir, Scale, Databricks, Snowflake, Anduril, c3.ai, or similar).
• Experience deploying ML or LLM features into production — familiarity with vector stores, evaluation harnesses, and prompt/RAG patterns.
• Built integrations against SAP, Oracle, Manhattan, Blue Yonder, Project44, FourKites, or other Tier‑1 supply‑chain systems.
• Experience with infrastructure‑as‑code (Terraform, Pulumi), Kubernetes, and modern observability stacks (OpenTelemetry, Datadog, Grafana).
• Veteran or DOD‑logistics background ; or experience operating in field‑deployed engineering teams.

05THE AI‑NATIVE EXPECTATION

At NavLogic AI, “familiar with AI tools” is table stakes — not a differentiator.

• You ship code with AI assistance daily — and you know when the agent is wrong.
• You build internal tooling and one‑off scripts with LLMs to compress hours of customer work into minutes.
• You can evaluate a model output critically — knowing when to trust, edit, escalat, or reject.
• You understand the basics of how generative AI and predictive ML work — well enough to debug a hallucination, not just route around it.
• You take seriously the ethical and reliability dimensions of deploying AI in physical‑world supply chains, where a wrong answer means a missed truck.

06WHAT WE OFFER

• Competitive Compensation Base salary + performance bonus + equity — benchmarked to Series A / B market rates.
• Flexible Work Remote‑first with optional hub access; async‑friendly culture that respects your time zone.
• AI Tooling Budget Dedicated annual budget for AI subscriptions, tools, and experimentation — we put our money where our values are.
• Learning & Development Conference attendance, online courses, and a quarterly book/resource allowance; we invest heavily in keeping you sharp.
• Mission‑Driven Team Work alongside supply‑chain veterans and AI engineers who have operated in the field and built production systems — no hand‑wav[e]?y hype here.
• Impact from Day One As an early hire you will shape the function, the product, and the culture — your fingerprints will be on everything.
• Health & Wellness Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision; mental‑health support; and generous PTO including military/veteran observances.

07HOW TO APPLY

We review applications on a rolling basis. To stand out, we encourage you to include a short note (3–5 sentences) on a deployment, integration, or customer‑facing project you’re proud of — what was hard, what you shipped, and what changed for the customer.

Applications without this note are still welcome; it simply helps us move faster.

Apply at: [e-mail]|Subject: FDE – [Your Name]