Forward Deployed Engineer
First seen by Alion on Oct 21, 2026.
About the Role:
We are looking for a Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) who can work closely with clients to understand their business processes, design and build technology solutions, integrate enterprise systems, and take solutions into production.
This is a hands-on engineering and client-facing role where you will own delivery end-to-end - from understanding business requirements and building the solution to deployment, troubleshooting, and continuous improvement.
Key Responsibilities:
- Work closely with client teams to understand business processes, systems, data flows, and pain points.
- Translate business requirements into scalable technical solutions and architecture.
- Design, develop, test, and deploy production-grade software and AI-driven solutions.
- Build rapid prototypes and POCs to validate business use cases.
- Integrate enterprise systems including ERP, CRM, core platforms, legacy systems, databases, APIs, and event-streaming platforms.
- Work with real-world data involving extraction, mapping, cleansing, transformation, and reconciliation.
- Deploy solutions in cloud, private cloud, VPC, and on-premise environments.
- Own go-live, hypercare, troubleshooting, monitoring, and production support.
- Ensure enterprise requirements around security, access control, audit, and data privacy are met.
- Conduct client workshops, technical discussions, solution demonstrations, and walkthroughs.
- Collaborate with Product, Engineering, AI/ML, and Business teams to incorporate field learnings into reusable solutions.
- Document integrations, configurations, deployment processes, and runbooks.
Must-Have Skills & Experience:
- 6+ years of experience in software engineering, Forward Deployed Engineering, Solutions Engineering, or Integration Engineering with significant client-facing delivery experience.
- Proven experience delivering complex multi-system integrations in production.
- Strong programming experience in Python and TypeScript/Node.js or Java.
- Strong understanding of REST/GraphQL APIs, microservices, SQL/NoSQL databases, ETL, data pipelines, data mapping, and data quality.
- Experience with AWS, Azure, or GCP.
- Hands-on experience with Docker, Git, and CI/CD.
- Strong understanding of enterprise authentication and security concepts including OAuth 2.0, SAML, OIDC, RBAC, secrets management, and audit logging.
- Working knowledge of LLM applications, LLM APIs, RAG, and AI agents, with the ability to integrate and deploy AI solutions in production.
- Strong debugging and problem-solving skills across applications, APIs, networks, authentication, databases, and infrastructure.
- Excellent communication skills with the ability to interact with CXOs, business users, IT/security teams, and engineers.
- Comfortable working independently at client locations and travelling when required.
Skills
Python, Java, Node.js, Generative AI, System Integration, Forward Deployment Engineering