Founding Forward Deployed Engineer (up to $220k)

Dex; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Dex is partnering with a manufacturing-focused company to recruit a founding Forward Deployed Engineer. You will sit with customers, translate their operational challenges into product improvements, and prototype and build the solutions end-to-end, from scoping to integration, working directly with leadership.

This role blends engineering with customer success, requiring hands-on coding and immediate customer-facing impact to productize deep operational knowledge.

Qualifications

• Minimum 2 years of full-time, customer-facing software engineering experience.
• Ability to write production code and prototype features independently.
• Translate user frustrations into intuitive features with a product mindset.
• Design scalable processes in code, operations, and automation.

Responsibilities

• Translate complex manufacturing problems into product features.
• Prototype and write production-grade code for new features and fixes.
• Own customer implementations end-to-end: scoping, onboarding, integration, and training.
• Extract reusable features and data models from each rollout to shape the core product.

Skills

customer-facing experience

product architect mindset

production code

systems thinking

German language

Job description

This role is with one of Dex's trusted partner companies. We work closely with their teams to truly understand their culture, goals, and what they're looking for, so we can match you with the right opportunity and give you context about the role before you commit to a process.

The role

This company builds AI agents that automate strategic decisions in manufacturing operations, sitting on top of ERP systems. Their customers are large manufacturers, currently in Germany and expanding to the US. Every deployment reveals new insights into complex operations. The mission: turn these bespoke learnings into a scalable product. They are backed by leading investors and a talent-dense team. You will be the founding Forward Deployed Engineer. This is a rare seat: roughly half engineering, half customer work. You'll sit with users, translate their operational challenges into product improvements, then prototype and build the solutions yourself. You own implementations end-to-end, from scoping to integration, working directly with the CEO and CTO to shape the product. This isn't a pure engineering role, nor is it just customer success; it's about productizing deep operational knowledge with zero handholding.

The work

• Translate complex manufacturing operational problems into product features.
• Prototype and write production-grade code to implement new features and fixes.
• Own customer implementations end-to-end: scoping, onboarding, integration, and training.
• Extract reusable features, data models, and playbooks from each customer rollout, directly shaping the core product with leadership.

What You Bring

• At least two years of full-time professional experience; you'll be customer-facing from day one.
• A product architect mindset: you turn complex user frustrations into intuitive, performant features.
• Ability to write production code and prototype features yourself, not just hand off specs.
• Systems thinking: you design scalable processes in code, operations, and human workflows, defaulting to data and automation.
• Fluency in German is a significant advantage, given the current customer base.