Forward Deployed Engineer (East Coast)

n8n GmbH; United States; Remote; USD 140,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

n8n GmbH seeks a Forward Deployed Engineer to embed on-site with enterprise customers, design and deploy production-grade automation, and contribute to reusable patterns and playbooks.

You will work with Product and Engineering to translate customer needs into scalable solutions, while building trust with both technical and non-technical stakeholders. Expect travel 30–50% and a fast-paced, product-led environment.

Qualifications

• Solid full-stack/backend engineering with production integrations.
• Experience building APIs, integrations, and automation pipelines.
• Ability to translate customer needs into reusable patterns.
• Comfort working directly in customer environments.
• Strong design and judgment; avoid over-engineering.
• Willingness to travel 30–50%.
• Fast learner across industries and tech stacks.

Responsibilities

• Embed on-site with enterprise customers for focused deployment engagements.
• Partner with Deployment Strategists to align technical execution with customer priorities.
• Build production workflows and reusable playbooks.
• Document learnings and contribute to product feedback.
• Deliver time-boxed engagements with clear outcomes.

Skills

Full-stack engineering

APIs & integrations

Automation pipelines

Customer-facing

Solution design

Technical judgment

Travel readiness

Tools

n8n familiarity

Job description

Your main goal will be to turn n8n’s most strategic enterprise deployments into production-ready success stories by embedding on-site, solving real customer problems, and building reusable automation patterns that shape our product.

To do so, you’ll work directly with customers, Deployment Strategists, and Product to make every engagement high-impact, scalable, and repeatable:

• Embed on-site with enterprise customers for focused 5-day deployment engagements, arriving with a hypothesis and leaving with production workflows in place.
• Partner closely with Deployment Strategists to align technical execution with customer priorities, stakeholder needs, and adoption goals.
• Build trust with technical and non-technical stakeholders by turning complex customer environments into clear, actionable solutions.

Build production-grade automation solutions

• Design and build workflows, integrations, and custom nodes tailored to each customer’s environment and scalable beyond the initial use case.
• Extend existing n8n nodes or add missing functionality where needed to unlock high-value enterprise use cases.
• Translate ambiguous business problems into concrete automation designs that prioritize real customer value over technical complexity.
• Work across industries and tech stacks, getting productive quickly in new environments.

Bridge customer needs with Product and Engineering

• Identify when a bespoke customer requirement should become a reusable node improvement, product feature, or platform capability.
• Create a clear feedback loop with Product and Engineering by documenting technical gaps, customer context, implementation learnings, and prioritization signals.
• Contribute reusable learnings, workflows, custom nodes, and integration patterns to an internal playbook library.

Turn customer learnings into product and playbooks

• Identify when a bespoke customer requirement should become a core product feature and document it clearly for Product.
• Contribute reusable learnings, workflows, and patterns to an internal playbook library.
• Help ensure every engagement makes the next one faster, stronger, and more productized.

Keep engagements focused and scalable

• Deliver time-boxed customer engagements with clear outcomes, rather than open-ended professional services work.
• Build solutions that customers can own and operate themselves.
• Know when to build, when to simplify, and when to push back to avoid unnecessary complexity.

REQUIREMENTS

Must-haves

• Strong engineering background: You have solid full-stack or backend engineering experience and have built integrations, APIs, or automation pipelines in production environments.
• Integration-building expertise: You can create custom nodes, extend existing integrations, and work confidently with APIs, authentication patterns, data models, and event-driven systems.
• Product-minded technical execution: You can distinguish between a one-off customer workaround, a reusable node improvement, and a product feature worth escalating.
• Customer-facing confidence: You’re comfortable working directly in customer environments and can build trust with engineers, operators, and non-technical stakeholders.
• Solution design skills: You can take a messy operational problem and turn it into a clean, practical technical design.
• Strong technical judgment: You know when to build, when to push back, and how to avoid gold-plating solutions that should stay simple.
• Willingness to travel: You’re open to travelling roughly 30-50% of the time for on-site engagements.
• Speed to productive: You can quickly understand new industries, tech stacks, and customer environments without needing everything to be neatly defined.

Nice-to-haves

• Workflow automation experience: You have familiarity with n8n or similar workflow automation tools.
• Enterprise deployment experience: You’ve worked with strategic enterprise accounts in complex technical environments.
• Forward deployed experience: You’ve worked in a forward deployed, solutions engineering, or similar role at a product-led technical organization.
• Product feedback experience: You’ve helped turn customer learnings into clear product feedback, roadmap input, or engineering specifications.

At n8n, you’ll be the founding Forward Deployed Engineer, helping define how we turn our largest enterprise deployments into long-term, referenceable success stories. Your work won’t sit in a demo environment — you’ll build production workflows with real users, influence our product roadmap, and create the playbooks that shape how this function scales.

You’ll join one of Europe’s fastest-growing startups at a moment of huge momentum, working with a remote-first team that values autonomy, speed, experimentation, and direct customer impact.

Sound like a challenge you’re excited to take on?