Forward Deployed Engineer
Confirmed on the employer's own hiring board on Sep 26, 2026. First seen by Alion on Sep 25, 2026. Clera scores B on the Alion truth index.
About the Role
This is the technical front line for enterprise deals across EMEA, sitting between product and sales at an early-stage AI infrastructure company. You will own the full arc from first customer conversation through production deployment, building the pre-sales playbook that the team after you inherits. It is a field-heavy role where your credibility with senior engineers and architects directly shapes how the company moves in Europe.
What You'll Do
Walk into customer environments, rapidly understand their data architecture and constraints, and demonstrate what becomes possible with agentic reasoning over their data.
Run proofs of value end-to-end: scoping, technical validation, competitive positioning, and conversion into production commitments.
Own the demo, handle technical objections, compare honestly against major competitors and hyperscalers, and hold the architecture whiteboard with skeptical principal engineers.
Run discovery sessions and technical deep-dives with data platform leads, infrastructure teams, and CIOs across the UK and Europe.
Build and own the pre-sales playbook: demo narratives, discovery frameworks, objection handling, and reference architectures.
Translate edge cases and customer constraints into structured product feedback that reaches engineering with enough context to act on.
Partner with internal ML and infrastructure teams on deployments, ensuring what you promised in the room is what gets built.
Act as the technical voice of the customer internally and the credible external voice of the company on site.
What We're Looking For
5 or more years of total professional experience, including 2 to 3 years in a hands-on technical or data role building systems, not just presenting about them.
Demonstrated track record converting technical proofs of value into production commitments in enterprise B2B software deals.
Deep working knowledge of the modern data stack: warehouses, ETL/ELT pipelines, data governance, and how enterprises architect and operate these systems.
Working knowledge of LLM and agentic systems deployed in production, including a realistic assessment of current capabilities and limitations.
Experience running technical discovery and demos with enterprise stakeholders (data architects, platform leads, CIOs) and handling complex technical objections.
Ability to navigate enterprise procurement, security reviews, and multi-stakeholder buying processes.
Comfortable being the sole company representative on site and operating with a high degree of ambiguity.
Experience at a field-heavy data or AI infrastructure company, or prior startup experience helping define go-to-market motion from scratch.
Knowledge of knowledge graphs, semantic layers, ontologies, or entity resolution is a strong plus.
Experience deploying into regulated or air-gapped environments (financial services, insurance, telco, or public sector) is valuable.
Enough Python or SQL to prototype in front of a customer rather than promising to follow up.
Multilingual ability or experience selling across multiple European markets is a plus.
Willingness and ability to travel regularly to customer sites across the UK and Europe.
Location
Hybrid, based in New York, NY. The role requires regular travel to customer sites across the UK and Europe. Visa sponsorship is not available.