Senior Forward Deployment Engineer (FDE)

Mappedin; United States; Remote; USD 150,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive base salary

20 days paid vacation

Comprehensive benefits from Day 1

Bar-raisers with ownership

Job summary

Mappedin is seeking a Forward Deployed Engineer to build custom applications on top of our indoor mapping platform. You’ll own projects end to end, from scoping with sales and customers to delivering working software using modern AI tooling.

As a founding-team member, you’ll create best practices, stay engaged with customers, and travel to venues globally. This role emphasizes autonomy and cross-functional collaboration, with a strong customer‑facing focus.

Qualifications

• Proven ability to build apps using AI and ship real software.
• Proven ability to engage customers and translate needs into scope.
• Proven ability to manage time and deliver against committed scope.
• Strong product and design taste with user experience focus.

Responsibilities

• Partner with sellers and customers to understand the problem and deliver a working app.
• Design and build custom applications on top of Mappedin’s platform with AI tooling.
• Own delivery from start to finish as the de facto project manager.
• Stay close to the customer, demo progress, gather feedback, and adjust.
• Help establish QA best practices for the Delivery team.
• Define patterns and ways of working with the VP of Delivery.
• Travel on-site to customer venues; up to 40% travel globally.
• For US-based FDEs: occasional technical support tickets for the largest Customer (≤10%).

Skills

AI-enabled app dev

Customer engagement

Delivery ownership

Product/design sense

Tools

AI tooling

Job description

About Mappedin

Mappedin is building the digital infrastructure for the physical world. Our indoor mapping platform transforms building floor plans and static data into dynamic digital maps that make venues more safe, efficient, and enjoyable. Operators of the world’s elite venues trust Mappedin, including Simon Property Group, Los Angeles International Airport, Major League stadiums, and Hudson Yards. We’ve mapped more than 10 billion square feet across 86 countries, and we’re just getting started. Learn more at www.mappedin.com.

About the Role

Forward Deployed Engineering is one of the most exciting bets we’re making at Mappedin, and we’re in the early days of building the team and the department from the ground up. As a Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE), you’ll build real applications on top of Mappedin’s platform, shaped by what customers actually need and scoped through a statement of work co‑created by sales engineering, the seller, and the customer.

This is a founding-team opportunity. You won’t inherit a playbook; you’ll help write one. The FDEs we’re hiring are Swiss Army knives: people who can move fluidly between talking to a customer, scoping a problem, designing a solution, building it with modern AI tooling, and shipping it. Each of you will bring a slightly different edge, but you’ll share the same core.

Crucially, you’ll own your projects end to end. You are effectively the project manager for the work you take on, accountable for delivering the scope you helped define, on the timeline you committed to.

What You’ll Do

• Partner with sellers and customers to understand the problem, ask sharp questions, and deliver a working application that meets the criteria of the statement of work.

• Design and build custom applications on top of Mappedin’s platform, using AI tooling to move from idea to working software quickly.

• Own delivery from start to finish, managing scope, timeline, and your own workstream as the de facto project manager for each engagement.

• Stay close to the customer throughout the build, demoing progress, gathering feedback, and adjusting as you learn.

• As a senior member of the team, build best practices for how the Delivery team should QA the many types of applications that are being shipped.

• Help establish the patterns, tooling, and ways of working alongside the VP of Delivery that will define how this team operates as it scales.

• Travel on-site to customer venues to work directly with stakeholders for all stages of the project. Expect to travel globally up to 40% of the time.

• For US-based FDEs: you'll occasionally handle technical support tickets for our largest customer, who requires US-based coverage. Expect this to take no more than 10% of your time, focused on backend/DevOps-type tasks.

What You Must Bring

These four things are non-negotiable. They’re the through line for every person on this team:

• A proven ability to build apps using AI. You’ve shipped real, working software using modern AI‑assisted development, not just experimented with it.

• A proven ability to engage customers. You’re comfortable in front of customers, you ask great questions, and you can translate ambiguous needs into a concrete scope.

• A proven ability to manage your time and own delivery. You can run your own projects, set realistic timelines, and consistently deliver against the scope you committed to.

• Strong product and design taste. You have a sharp instinct for what to build and how it should feel. You care about the user experience, you can tell the difference between a solution that merely works and one that’s genuinely good, and you make smart calls about what matters.

Who You Might Be

We are deliberately open on background. The title on your résumé matters far less than your ability to deliver on the four things above. You might come from, or blend several of, the following:

• Product management

• Product design

• Customer‑facing software engineering

• Technical implementation or solutions engineering

• Project or program management

If you’ve worn several of these hats and you light up at the idea of building software with AI while staying close to customers, we want to hear from you, regardless of whether your past roles sat inside a traditional software engineering org.

This role isn’t for you if

• You'd rather contribute to part of a build than own the whole thing - application and project, start to finish.

• You'd rather hand work off than own the outcome - timeline, scope, and the last 10% that turns "built" into "production ready".

• You'd rather perfect one craft than blend engineering, project management, and external communications - the "Swiss Army knife" framing isn't a metaphor to you, it's a warning sign.

How We Work

At Mappedin, we keep things simple, we play for the team, aspire for more, and stay curious. On the FDE team specifically, that means high ownership, low ceremony, and a shared commitment to shipping useful things for real customers.

We believe in being transparent about how we hire. We use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to help record interviews and create notes for us to review later. Every application and interview is still reviewed by our People Operations team, and all hiring decisions are made by people - not AI.

We welcome applications from people with disabilities. We provide reasonable accommodations for candidates upon request through the recruitment process. For additional information, please email us at [e-mail] or call us at [phone] and ask to speak to a member of the Human Resources team.

What's in it for you

• Competitive base salary: $150,000 - $190,000

• 20 days of paid vacation, available from your first day

• Comprehensive benefits from Day 1

• A team of bar raisers with low ego and high ownership