Senior Forward Deployed Engineer

United States Digital Space LLC; United States; Hybrid; USD 194,000 - 266,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical Insurance

Dental Insurance

Vision Insurance

Flexible Spending Accounts

Commuter Benefits

Job summary

United States Digital Space LLC is seeking a Senior Forward Deployed Engineer to join our team and operate at the intersection of product engineering and customer impact. You will be embedded with a strategic global customer, writing production code, shaping architecture, and influencing how our platform is used at scale.

You will act as a technical extension of both organizations, helping the customer ship faster while surfacing insights back to our engineering.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• Own mission-critical services with real-world users and on-call readiness.
• Ship-first mentality with high velocity and modern framework knowledge.
• Fluency across frontend, backend, database, and distributed infrastructure.
• Experience integrating AI-augmented workflows into development cycles.
• Ability to decompose business requirements into scalable architectures.
• Deep cloud experience (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and security basics.

Responsibilities

• Stay deeply technical and work on production systems.
• Write production code and deploy within customer infrastructure.
• Own technical success across the customer account.
• Participate in customer engineering rituals and incident response.
• Accelerate platform adoption and surface real-world feedback.
• Engage senior leadership and manage strategic relationships.

Skills

Software engineering

Production ownership

Full-stack depth

AI-native development

Systems design

Cloud proficiency

Executive presence

Tools

Windsurf

OpenCode

Job description

About Us

At the company, we are on a mission to help build a better Internet. Today the company runs one of the world’s largest networks that powers millions of websites and other Internet properties for customers ranging from individual bloggers to SMBs to Fortune 500 companies. the company protects and accelerates any Internet application online without adding hardware, installing software, or changing a line of code. Internet properties powered by the company all have web traffic routed through its intelligent global network, which gets smarter with every request. As a result, they see significant improvement in performance and a decrease in spam and other attacks. the company was named to Entrepreneur Magazine’s Top Company Cultures list and ranked among the World’s Most Innovative Companies by Fast Company.

At the company, we’re not looking for people who wait for a polished roadmap; we’re looking for the builders who see the cracks in the Internet that everyone else has simply learned to live with. We value candidates who have the instinct to spot a "normalized" problem and the AI-native curiosity to create a solution using the latest tools. Our culture is built on iteration, leveraging AI to ship faster today to make it better tomorrow, while ensuring that every improvement, no matter how small, is shared across the team to lift everyone up. If you’re the type of person who values curiosity over bureaucracy, and that AI is a partner in solving tough problems to keep the Internet moving forward, you’ll fit right in.

Available Locations

• San Francisco, US

About the Role

the company’s SeniorForward Deployed Engineers (FDEs) operate at the intersection of product engineering and customer impact.

As an FDE, you will be embedded within one of the company’s most strategic global customers, working side-by-side with their engineering teams to build and deploy solutions using the company’s platform. Unlike traditional Solutions Architects or consultants, you will write production code, shape technical architecture, and directly influence how the company products are used at massive scale.

You will operate as a technical extension of both organizations - helping the customer ship faster while surfacing real-world product insights back to the company engineering.

Responsibilities

This role is ideal for engineers who want to:

• Stay deeply technical
• Work on real production systems
• Influence product direction
• Build long-term partnerships with world-class engineering teams
• Deep Technical Embedding: Serve as the dedicated, long-term technical partner within a strategic customer’s engineering organization, operating as a trusted extension of their team.
• Production-Level Engineering: Design, build, and deploy production-ready code and configurations directly into customer infrastructure using the the company platform.
• Technical Accountability: Own the account's technical success across the entire the company portfolio. Serve as the primary technical point of contact, with other the company technical resources taking direction from your technical strategy for the account.
• Operational Integration: Participate in customer engineering rituals, including daily standups, design reviews, and real-time incident response.
• Platform Advocacy & Adoption: Identify opportunities to accelerate the adoption of the company services, unlocking new capabilities across the customer’s tech stack.
• Platform Breadth & Depth: Deep technical competence in building production applications on a modern stack, combined with the willingness and ability to go deep on all the company product areas. From Workers to security, networking, and observability.
• Feedback Loop & Product Influence: Surface real-world edge cases and product gaps directly to the company’s Product and Engineering teams to influence the developer platform roadmap.
• Strategic Relationship Management: Establish and maintain trusted technical relationships with senior leadership (Staff+ engineers, Directors, and VPs).
• On-Site Presence: Maintain a regular on-site presence at customer locations to foster deep collaboration and cultural alignment.

Desirable Skills, Knowledge, and Experience

• Proven Engineering Pedigree: 7+ years of professional software engineering experience. You are a builder at heart, with a track record of delivering production-grade systems, not just advising on them.
• Production Ownership & Operational Maturity: You have owned mission-critical services with real-world users. You understand the gravity of on-call rotations, the urgency of incident response, and the architectural rigor required to maintain "five nines" uptime.
• Active Practitioner: You are currently in the IDE. You have a "ship-first" mentality and maintain a high velocity, staying current with modern frameworks, languages, and deployment patterns.
• Full-Stack Architectural Depth: Broad technical fluency across the entire stack—from frontend performance and backend logic to database optimization and distributed infrastructure.
• AI-Native Development: You have integrated AI-augmented workflows (e.g., Windsurf, OpenCode) into your daily development cycle to accelerate prototyping and delivery.
• Systems Design & Strategic Thinking: Ability to decompose complex business requirements into scalable, resilient technical architectures. You can visualize the "big picture" without losing sight of the implementation details.
• Cloud Ecosystem Fluency: Deep experience with at least one major cloud provider (AWS, GCP, or Azure), including an understanding of serverless, networking, and security primitives.
• High Agency & Navigating Ambiguity: You are a self-starter who thrives in "zero-to-one" environments. You don't wait for a ticket; you identify the problem and own the solution from end-to-end.
• Executive Presence: Comfortable engaging in high-stakes technical and strategic discussions with VP-level stakeholders, with the ability to translate complex engineering trade‑offs into business impact.

Bonus Points

• Direct experience building on the company Workers, or the broader the company Developer Platform.
• Previous experience at a fast‑paced startup or in a customer-facing engineering role where you operated directly within a partner’s codebase.
• A visible public profile, including open‑source contributions, technical blogging, or speaking engagements at industry conferences.

Compensation

Compensation may be adjusted depending on work location.

• For Bay Area based hires: Estimated annual salary of $194,000 - $266,000.

Equity

This role is eligible to participate in the company’s equity plan.

Benefits

the company offers a complete package of benefits and programs to support you and your family. Our benefits programs can help you pay health care expenses, support caregiving, build capital for the future and make life a little easier and fun! The below is a description of our benefits for employees in the United States, and benefits may vary for employees based outside the U.S.

Health & Welfare Benefits

• Medical/Rx Insurance
• Dental Insurance
• Vision Insurance
• Flexible Spending Accounts
• Commute