Forward Deployed Engineer

depthfirst Inc.; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Health insurance

Office meals

Career impact

Job summary

depthfirst is seeking a Forward-Deployed Engineer to help enterprise customers deploy and operate our security-focused platform. You will work directly with customer security, infrastructure, and cloud teams to understand architectures, navigate requirements, and own delivery from discovery to production readiness.

You will design deployment architectures, troubleshoot complex systems, and write production code to unblock customers.

Qualifications

• Experience building and operating production systems in infrastructure engineering, SRE, or a similar role.
• Strong cloud infrastructure and Kubernetes in production.
• Solid networking and cloud security fundamentals.
• Proficient in Go or Python with production code and automation experience.
• Experience with infrastructure as code, deployment pipelines, and observability.
• Excellent communication and ability to coordinate with customers across teams.
• Based in or willing to relocate to San Francisco.

Responsibilities

• Own enterprise deployments from architecture and planning through installation, troubleshooting, upgrades, and operational handoff.
• Collaborate with customer security, infrastructure, and cloud teams to understand environments and establish a path to production.
• Address deployment challenges across cloud infrastructure, Kubernetes, networking, IAM, and application configuration.
• Write code to unblock deployments, build integrations, and deliver new product capabilities.
• Build tooling and automation for onboarding, deployment validation, upgrades, and ongoing operations.
• Turn field learnings into reusable platform improvements with engineering teams.
• Clearly communicate tradeoffs, dependencies, and progress to customers and internal teams.
• Travel to customer sites as needed to support deployments.

Skills

Cloud infra

Kubernetes

Go or Python

Networking & Security

IaC

Observability

DevOps

Customer communication

Deployment ownership

Job description

About depthfirst

We believe that software is the foundation of modern civilization. Yet vulnerabilities threaten its integrity, security, and resilience. We are on a mission to secure the world's software.

depthfirst is building intelligence to detect and remediate critical software vulnerabilities. We are training and scaling security AI agents to discover zero-days vulnerabilities across large customer codebases and popular open source software.

Our founding team includes deep expertise in data, infrastructure, security and LLMs with technical leaders from DeepMind, Databricks, Square, and Faire. We are looking for strong technical people who are interested in working at the intersection of AI, Security, and Infrastructure.

About This Role

We're looking for a Forward-Deployed Engineer to help enterprise customers deploy and operate depthfirst in their environments. You'll work directly with their security, infrastructure, and cloud teams to understand their architecture, navigate technical requirements, and own delivery from initial discovery through production readiness.

You'll design deployment architectures, troubleshoot complex systems, and write production code to unblock customers. Each environment brings different infrastructure, security, and operational requirements. You'll help customers work through those constraints and partner with our engineering team to build the integrations and capabilities they need.

You'll also turn what you learn in the field into improvements that make depthfirst easier to deploy, operate, and scale across a wide range of enterprise environments.

You’re excited about this role because you will…

• Own enterprise deployments from architecture and planning through installation, troubleshooting, upgrades, and operational handoff.

• Work directly with customer security, infrastructure, and cloud teams to understand their environments and establish a clear path to production.

• Solve deployment challenges across cloud infrastructure, Kubernetes, networking, identity and access management, and application configuration.

• Write code to unblock deployments, build integrations, and deliver new product capabilities.

• Build tooling and automation for onboarding, deployment validation, upgrades, and ongoing operations.

• Turn recurring customer needs into reusable platform improvements, working closely with our infrastructure, product, and security engineers.

• Communicate technical tradeoffs, dependencies, and progress clearly, keeping customer and internal teams aligned.

• Travel to customer sites as needed to support successful deployments.

Qualifications

• Experience building and operating production systems in infrastructure engineering, platform engineering, SRE, or a similar role.

• Strong hands‑on knowledge of cloud infrastructure and Kubernetes, including deploying, debugging, and operating applications in production.

• A solid understanding of networking and cloud security fundamentals, including private connectivity, DNS, TLS, IAM, and access controls.

• Ability to investigate problems across infrastructure and application boundaries, identify root causes, and implement fixes.

• Proficiency in a language such as Go or Python, with experience shipping production code and automation.

• Experience with infrastructure as code, deployment pipelines, and observability.

• Strong communication skills and an interest in working directly with customers. You can understand unfamiliar environments, explain technical decisions, and coordinate across teams.

• Ownership and sound judgment when requirements are ambiguous or a deployment doesn't fit an existing playbook.

• Based in or willing to relocate to San Francisco.

Bonus Points For

• Experience owning technical engagements with large enterprise customers as an FDE, SRE, platform engineer, or solutions engineer.

• Deep experience with AWS and EKS, Helm, and Terraform or Pulumi.

• Experience with multiple Cloud providers.

• Experience deploying enterprise software into environments with strict networking, access, and security requirements.

• Experience supporting varied customer architectures and integrating software with existing infrastructure and operational tooling.

• Experience with AI platforms or security products.

What We Offer

• Competitive salary with meaningful equity.

• Health, vision, and dental insurance.

• Office lunch and dinner when working from our San Francisco office.

• Direct impact on customer success and product direction.

• The opportunity to work at the cutting edge of AI and security.

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depthfirst is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, national origin, disability, age, genetic information, veteran status, marital status, pregnancy or related condition, or any other basis protected by law.

To all recruitment agencies: depthfirst does not accept agency resumes. Please do not forward resumes to depthfirst employees. depthfirst is not responsible for any fees related to unsolicited resumes and will not pay fees to any third-party agency or company that does not have a signed agreement with the Company.