Forward Deployed Engineer

Construction is one of the world's most important industries, and one of the most underserved by software. We're building the operating system for construction, bringing together the information and tools builders need to run their business. Come help us let builders build.

Melbourne, hybrid - the team is generally in our Richmond office Mon/Wed/Fri, plus time on customer sites and in their offices.

Why BuildPass?

Builders spend too much time working around spreadsheets, PDFs and paper. BuildPass brings estimating, finance, scheduling, safety and site management into one platform, from the first estimate to the final payment.

Today BuildPass powers:

• 1,000+ head contractors, 100,000+ subcontractors and 500,000+ field workers across Australia, US, Canada, and NZ
• 3.2M+ site sign-ons, 1.5M+ forms, 140k+ drawings and defects logged on real jobs
• An AI layer that works on a builder's live data - agents, MCP and multi-modal assistants - from the finances to the office to the field

We're building a trusted record of a construction business: its people, projects, costs and what's happening on site. That gives AI useful context, and making it work takes a close understanding of how customers operate. You'll work alongside builders and our product and engineering teams to turn that context into workflows people use, and bring what you learn back into the platform.

The role

As a Forward Deployed Engineer, you'll work directly with customers to understand a problem, build a solution and help them put it to use. You'll sit in Customer Success, partner with CSMs and Support, and work closely with Product, Engineering and AI Operations. Roughly half your week will be spent with customers on calls, on site and in their workflows; the other half will be hands-on building.

The right answer might be a better workflow, a configuration change, a data migration, an integration or an AI automation. You'll help the customer choose an approach, agree what success looks like, and follow it through from discovery to a tested solution they can use. When a change belongs in the core product, you'll work with Product Engineering on a clear brief backed by customer evidence.

Examples of what you'll work on

• Our largest accounts. Be the technical counterpart to CSMs: join the calls, ask the second and third why, and turn vague asks into solvable problems.
• Solutions on and around BuildPass. Build and roll out configuration, integrations with the tools builders already use, data migrations, scripts and AI workflows using BuildPass Agent, MCP and our APIs. Test the result, respect customer permissions and data, and leave clear documentation and ownership for what you build.
• Automation for the customer team. Take the manual work off CS and Support - implementation requests, imports, register setups - with tools, automations and agents.
• Resolve technical blockers. Fix what you can directly, and hand off what you can't with repro steps and evidence.
• The feedback loop to product. Spot patterns across accounts and turn useful solutions into shared tools, templates or product improvements with the relevant team.

What success looks like

• In 90 days: you understand the priority workflows in your first accounts, have delivered a scoped solution customers are using, and can show what changed. You've also identified the next technical opportunities with Customer Success and Product.
• Enterprise customers know who their technical person at BuildPass is, and trust them.
• CSMs have a technical partner who scopes requests, keeps progress visible and brings in the right people to resolve them.
• Product and AI teams get field evidence from you, not secondhand anecdotes.
• You agree success measures with the customer and can show the result, such as time saved, fewer manual steps or stronger adoption of a workflow.

You'll thrive here if you…

• Go to the customer. Customer calls energise you. You'd rather sit with a site manager and watch them work than guess from a ticket.
• Find the real problem. When a customer asks for a feature, you dig until you find the workflow underneath, then solve that.
• Build before you present. You use working prototypes to test assumptions with customers, and know what needs testing and hardening before a customer relies on the result.
• Own it end to end. You arrive with the problem, a proposed solution and a clear ask, then drive it to done. No two customer problems arrive the same shape - you bring the structure.
• Are resourceful across the stack. You can work with APIs, SQL, scripts and unfamiliar data, choose the simplest useful approach, and bring in Product Engineering when the problem needs deeper expertise.
• Reach for AI first. You use AI throughout your workflow and apply your own judgement to the result. You've built automations with it and know where it falls over.
• Write it down. Your briefs to engineering and updates to customers are precise, evidenced and easy to act on.

No degree, big-name employer or minimum years required. We care more about instincts and evidence: what you've owned, and what changed because of you.

What we'd love to see

• Technical work with customers in the room: solutions engineering, implementation, technical support or success, consulting, or engineering where you kept pulling yourself onto customer calls.
• Hands-on experience building and debugging integrations, scripts or applications with APIs, SQL and TypeScript, Python or a similar language. You can test, document and maintain what you build.
• Bonus: deeper AI work (agents, evals, MCP servers); construction experience - you know what a SWMS is and why site diaries matter; being first in a forward deployed or solutions seat.

This role may not suit you if…

• You prefer a role focused entirely on coding or entirely on customer conversations.
• You prefer to hand over technical work before rollout, adoption and ongoing ownership are clear.
• You prefer to work from fully defined specifications rather than helping customers shape the problem.

What we offer

• Competitive salary, with the opportunity for equity
• Opportunities to visit and work in Austin, Texas as needed
• The opportunity to shape how we solve customer problems, build reusable tools and bring field experience into product decisions
• A generous budget for AI tools and models, with the freedom to choose what helps you build and explore better ways of working
• Direct time with customers on construction sites, where you can see the impact of what you've built

How we hire

We want to understand how you think, build and work with people. The process centres on your work and a practical challenge, and we can adapt the format to help you do your best work.

• First conversation (60 min)

  Meet Nathan (Customer Success Lead) and Kina (Product Lead). Bring a customer problem you're able to share, with confidential details removed. Walk us through what you learned, what you built and what changed for the customer.

• A challenge

  Choose a co-working session or a take-home on your own time. You'll work through a realistic customer problem and sketch or build a solution. We'll explain the scope, expected time and how we'd like you to use AI before you begin.

• Final chat (45 min)

  Meet Aaron (co-founder and CTO) and Tom (AI Operations Lead) to discuss your challenge, how you like to work, and what you want to build at BuildPass.

Location & other details

This role is based in Melbourne, with hybrid working from our Richmond office and opportunities to visit and work in Austin, Texas as needed. The team generally spends three days a week together in the office, with flexibility in how we arrange that. We aren't offering visa sponsorship for this role at this time.