Forward Deployed Engineer - AI & Product Engineering
First seen by Alion on Nov 2, 2026.
The Role :
As a Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) at knacklabs.ai, you will sit at the intersection of engineering, product, and customer success.
You will work directly with customer teams to understand their workflows and pain points, translate business problems into technical solutions, rapidly prototype and deploy applications, and turn customer learnings into reusable product capabilities. This role is ideal for someone who combines strong software engineering fundamentals with product thinking and customer empathy.
What You Will Own :
1. Customer Embedding :
- Work directly with customers to understand their business processes, workflows, pain points, and technical environments.
- Translate customer needs into clear technical and product requirements.
- Build strong relationships with technical and business stakeholders.
2. Solution Building :
- Design, build, and deploy custom integrations, workflows, and applications on top of the knacklabs.ai platform.
- Work across backend, APIs, databases, cloud infrastructure, and frontend integrations as required.
- Build production-quality solutions while balancing speed, scalability, and maintainability.
3. Product Thinking & Ownership :
- Identify recurring customer problems and opportunities for product improvement.
- Translate customer feedback into product requirements and actionable engineering work.
- Partner closely with product and engineering teams to turn one-off customer solutions into reusable, scalable product capabilities.
- Contribute to product decisions based on real customer usage and feedback.
4. Rapid Prototyping :
- Quickly prototype and validate solutions in ambiguous and fast-moving environments.
- Move from problem discovery - solution design - prototype - production deployment.
- Be comfortable shipping a practical solution today while continuously improving it over time.
5. Technical Troubleshooting :
- Debug issues across the stack, including APIs, integrations, databases, data pipelines, and frontend systems.
- Diagnose and resolve issues in live customer environments.
- Work closely with engineering teams when deeper product or platform changes are required.
6. Ongoing Ownership :
- Own the technical relationship with select customers post-deployment.
- Monitor solution performance and reliability.
- Continuously improve solutions as customer requirements evolve and scale.
7. Travel :
- Travel to customer sites as needed.
- Travel will be occasional and may vary depending on the customer/account.
What We're Looking For :
Must Have :
- 4+ years of experience across software engineering, product engineering, technical product management, solutions engineering, implementation, or a combination of these.
- Strong software engineering fundamentals with proficiency in at least one backend language such as Python, Node.js, Go, or similar.
- Comfort working across the stack and understanding how different technical components come together.
- Experience with REST/GraphQL APIs, databases (SQL/NoSQL), and cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure).
- Ability to understand business problems and translate them into practical technical solutions.
- Strong product thinking and ability to prioritize based on customer/business impact.
- Ability to work independently in ambiguous, fast-changing environments.
- Strong communication skills, with the ability to explain technical concepts and trade-offs to both engineers and non-technical stakeholders.
- A strong bias toward action and ownership.
Good to Have :
- Prior experience as a Forward Deployed Engineer, Solutions Engineer, Product Engineer, Technical Product Manager, or in consulting/implementation.
- Experience working with AI/ML products, LLM-based applications, or data-intensive systems.
- Familiarity with enterprise environments, integration patterns, security, and compliance considerations.
- Experience working directly with customers or external stakeholders.
- Startup experience or comfort working in an early-stage, fast-changing environment.
- Experience taking customer-specific solutions and turning them into scalable product capabilities.
What We Offer :
- The opportunity to see your work directly and immediately impact real customers.
- A high-ownership role with a direct path into product, engineering, and customer-facing leadership.
- Competitive compensation, including equity.
- The opportunity to work across engineering, product, AI, and customer solutions.
- A collaborative, fast-moving team building at the frontier of applied AI.
Skills
Full Stack, Python, RESTful API, Cloud, Forward Deployment Engineering, Node.js, Golang, AWS, AI Integration, Generative AI