Forward Deployed Engineer

Dropzone AI; United States; Remote; USD 170,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Company paid health insurance

401K with employer match

Self-managed PTO

Job summary

Dropzone AI is seeking a Forward Deployed Engineer to work across strategic customer accounts, helping the company become more trusted, accurate, and embedded in day-to-day security operations. You will interact with customers, TAMs, Product, Engineering, and security stakeholders to align workflows and expectations.

You will operate behind the scenes with TAMs and engineering, conducting technical discovery, tuning opportunities, and deploying customer-specific configurations.

Qualifications

• 4+ years experience in a customer-facing technical role.
• Strong understanding of SOC workflows, alert triage, escalation paths, investigation quality, analyst expectations, and security operations.
• Ability to translate ambiguous customer context into precise technical configuration.
• Excellent written and verbal communication and judgment.

Responsibilities

• Support strategic customer accounts as a technical resource.
• Lead or support technical discovery for strategic customers.
• Configure response workflows, notifications, escalation paths, and customer-approved behaviors.
• Produce tuning, efficacy, and operationalization reports for strategic accounts.
• Partner with Product and Engineering to elevate product gaps with customer context.

Skills

SOC workflows

APIs

Automation

Scripting

Security operations

Tools

SIEM

EDR

SOAR

Job description

Dropzone’s mission is to scale cybersecurity beyond human limits, and augment every single human security engineer/analyst with an army of AI security specialists. Humans alone cannot sufficiently protect our digital future, andAIaugmentation is the only way for defenders to reclaim the high ground. We are an award winning company disrupting the $200B+ cybersecurity market.
Powered by GenAIadvancements, our technology offloads repetitive day-to-day work and frees human analysts to focus on real threats and higher-value projects. We are venture-backed, and our team has a rare blend of deep experience across cybersecurity,AI/ML, and SaaS product development. Join us if you want to be on the ground floor of using GenAIto transform cyber defense. Learn more at www.dropzone.ai.

About the role

In this role, you will work across strategic customer accounts to help Dropzone become more trusted, accurate, and embedded in day-to-day security operations. You will work directly with customers, TAMs, Product, Engineering, and security stakeholders to understand each customer’s workflows, policies, escalation paths, exceptions, analyst expectations, and operational goals.

This is not a traditional implementation manager role, and it is not a replacement for the TAM. The TAM remains the primary owner of the customer relationship and account management motion. The FDE is not the primary account manager or ticket triage owner. Instead, the Forward Deployed Engineer provides deeper technical and operational support behind the scenes and, when appropriate, directly with customers during onboarding, optimization, large-scale pilots, or high-priority account work.

You should expect direct customer interaction in this role, especially with strategic customers during onboarding, optimization, and ongoing tuning work. You should also be comfortable operating behind the scenes with TAMs, Product, and Engineering to review investigations, identify tuning opportunities, build and deploy customer-specific configurations, refine response workflows, and measure whether Dropzone is becoming more useful, trusted, and sticky inside the customer’s SOC.

You will also help create continuity from pre-sales discovery through post-sales operationalization for strategic customers, especially where understanding the customer’s environment early can improve the long‑term customer experience.

What you'll do

• Support strategic customer accounts as a technical and operationalization-focused resource.
• Partner with TAMs to help customers operationalize Dropzone without replacing the TAM as the primary account owner.
• Lead or support technical discovery for strategic customers, strategic pilots, and high-profile accounts.
• Review Dropzone investigations to identify tuning opportunities, outcome alignment gaps, workflow friction, and areas where customer trust can improve.
• Draft and refine tuning recommendations based on each customer’s specific environment, workflows, policies, and analyst expectations.
• Configure response workflows, notifications, escalation paths, and customer‑approved behaviors.
• Translate customer SOC practices into precise, approved Dropzone behavior.
• Help customers identify functional alternatives or product‑supported paths before escalating product gaps.
• Open and document internal support or product cases when customer needs cannot be met through existing functionality.
• Produce tuning, efficacy, and operationalization reports for strategic accounts.
• Track impact through analyst feedback, outcome disagreement trends, benign resolution trends, tuning coverage, workflow adoption, and customer trust indicators.
• Partner with Product and Engineering to elevate product gaps with clear evidence and customer context.
• Build repeatable playbooks for customer tuning, operationalization, and long‑term maintenance.
• Maintain clear boundaries between strategic operationalization, standard support, incident response, and custom development.

What success looks like

• Strategic customers trust Dropzone outcomes faster.
• Customers move from initial deployment to meaningful operational use more smoothly.
• Customer‑specific SOC practices are reflected consistently in Dropzone.
• Analysts spend less time validating repetitive investigations.
• Response workflows and escalations are mapped to approved customer outcomes.
• TAMs have a strong technical partner who can drive tuning, investigation review, and operationalization work.
• Product and Engineering receive clearer field signal with customer evidence and operational context.
• Strategic operationalization becomes repeatable, measurable, and scalable.
• Dropzone becomes stickier and more embedded in strategic customer environments.

Requirements

• 4+ years experience in a customer‑facing technical role such as Forward Deployed Engineer, Solutions Architect, Security Engineer, Detection Engineer, Technical Customer Success Engineer, or Sales Engineer.
• Strong understanding of SOC workflows, alert triage, escalation paths, investigation quality, analyst expectations, and security operations.
• Technical acumen in areas such as scripting, development, APIs, integrations, networking, SRE, CloudOps, DevOps, or security automation.
• Ability to translate ambiguous customer context into precise technical configuration.
• Strong written and verbal communication.
• Excellent judgment around customer requests, product gaps, risk, scope, and escalation paths.
• Ability to manage multiple customer workstreams with strong follow‑through.
• Comfort working directly with customers as well as operating behind the scenes with TAMs, Product, and Engineering.
• Comfortable working in an early‑stage environment with ambiguity and high ownership.
• Early‑stage startup mindset. You thrive on ambiguity and move with lightspeed execution
• Being data‑driven is part of your DNA.

Nice to haves

• Experience with SIEM, EDR, SOAR, cloud security, detection engineering, or security automation.
• Experience with APIs, integrations, or workflow automation.
• Experience supporting large enterprise pilots or strategic customer deployments.
• Experience building repeatable customer delivery playbooks.
• Experience working across pre‑sales and post‑sales motions for strategic accounts.

We are a 100% remote company where you will work from your home with company‑provided equipment to set you up for success. Semi‑frequent travel to professional office settings and other events locally and nationally; some overnight travel expected.

Compensation

In the spirit of pay transparency, we are excited to share the base salary range below, exclusive of fringe benefits or potential bonuses. If you are hired at Dropzone your final base salary compensation will be determined based on factors such as geographic location, skills, education, and/or experience. In addition to those factors, we believe in the importance of pay equity and consider internal equity of our current team members as a part of any final offer. Please keep in mind that hiring at the maximum of the range would not be typical to allow for future and continued salary growth. In addition, all compensation packages include significant above market new hire equity grants because we believe in rewarding long term value creation. We also offer a generous benefits package, including company paid health insurance, 401K Plan with employer match, Self‑Managed PTO, parental leave, and more.

The pay range for this role is:

$170,000 - $190,000 USD

Voluntary Self‑Identification

As set forth in Dropzone AI’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy,we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.

If you believe you belong to any of the categories of protected veterans listed below, please indicate by making the appropriate selection.As a government contractor subject to the Vietnam Era Veterans Readjustment Assistance Act (VEVRAA), we request this information in order to measurethe effectiveness of the outreach and positive recruitment efforts we undertake pursuant to VEVRAA. Classification of protected categoriesis as follows:

A "disabled veteran" is one of the following: a veteran of the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service who is entitled to compensation (or who but for the receipt of military retired pay would be entitled to compensation) under laws administered by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs; or a person who was discharged or released from active duty because of a service‑connected disability.

A "recently separated veteran" means any veteran during the three‑year period beginning on the date of such veteran's discharge or release from active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval, or air service.

An "active duty wartime or campaign badge veteran" means a veteran who served on active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service during a war, or in a campaign or expedition for which a campaign badge has been authorized under the laws administered by the Department of Defense.

An "Armed forces service medal veteran" means a veteran who, while serving on active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service, participated in a United States military operation for which an Armed Forces service medal was awarded pursuant to Executive Order 12985.