Forward Deployed Engineer

OpenKrill; United States; On-site; USD 170,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

401K with employer match

Self‑Managed PTO

Parental leave

Job summary

Dropzone AI is hiring a Forward Deployed Engineer to work across strategic customer accounts, helping embed Dropzone into day-to-day security operations. You will interact with customers and internal teams to tailor workflows, review investigations, and deploy customer-specific configurations.

The role blends on-scene and behind-the-scenes support with TAMs, Product, and Engineering. You will build repeatable playbooks, measure outcomes, and drive continuous tuning across pilots and deployments

Qualifications

• 4+ years in a customer-facing technical role (Forward Deployed Engineer, Solutions Architect, Security Engineer, etc.).
• Strong understanding of SOC workflows, alert triage, escalation paths, and analyst expectations.
• Experience with scripting, APIs, integrations, networking, or DevOps in security contexts.
• Ability to translate ambiguous customer context into precise technical configuration.
• Excellent written and verbal communication; ability to manage multiple streams.

Responsibilities

• Support strategic customer accounts as a technical and operational resource.
• Collaborate with TAMs to enable Dropzone without replacing the TAM as owner.
• Lead or support technical discovery for strategic customers and pilots.
• Review investigations to identify tuning opportunities and workflow gaps.
• Draft tuning recommendations based on customer environments and policies.
• Configure response workflows, notifications, and escalation paths.
• Translate customer SOC practices into Dropzone behavior.
• Create and document internal support cases when needed.
• Produce tuning, efficacy, and operationalization reports for key accounts.
• Track impact via analyst feedback, trends, and trust indicators.
• Partner with Product/Engineering to address gaps with customer context.
• Build repeatable playbooks for tuning and long-term maintenance.

Skills

Technical customer-facing experience

Scripting

APIs & integrations

Networking & CloudOps

DevOps in security

Security automation

Strong written and verbal comms

Judgment on requests & scope

Job description

About Dropzone AI

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, and AI augmentation is the only way for defenders to reclaim the high ground. We are an award winning company disrupting the $200B+ cybersecurity market.

Powered by Gen AI advancements, 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 Gen AI to 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 upscale 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.

Work Environment/Travel

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