Forward Deployed Engineer
First seen by Alion on Sep 23, 2026.
Role Overview:
This role puts a senior engineer inside the customer environment to get the platform installed, integrated, and adopted. You will run cluster and platform stack installations at customer sites, integrate with whatever identity, network and application estate the customer already has, build the integrations they need, and own technical success from proof of concept through production. You are the technical bridge in both directions: translating customer requirements into solutions and turning field experience into product feedback that gets acted on. This is a build role, not a coordination role. Travel and work from customer premises, within and outside India, are mandatory.
Minimum Requirements:
- Strong hands-on engineering. You write and debug the code and configuration yourself rather than specifying it for someone else.
- Practical Kubernetes and Helm experience sufficient to install, configure and troubleshoot a platform product in an unfamiliar environment.
- Solid Linux administration on enterprise distributions.
- Working experience with AI and ML systems, LLM applications and production deployment, including retrieval pipelines and evaluation.
- Understanding cloud and infrastructure concepts, CI/CD and DevOps practice.
- Networking and identity fundamentals are strong enough to debug connectivity and authentication problems inside a customer's estate.
- Ability to troubleshoot across multiple layers of a solution and correctly attribute a fault.
- Prior client-facing technical delivery experience across multiple engagements, with excellent communication to both technical and business stakeholders.
- High tolerance for ambiguity and shifting scope, and the ability to make decisions on site without waiting for consensus.
- Willingness to travel and work from customer premises, within and outside India.
Preferred Requirements:
- Prior forward deployed, solutions-engineering, professional-services or consulting background at a platform or infrastructure vendor.
- Domain depth in a target vertical such as banking and financial services, public sector, telecommunications or healthcare.
- Enterprise security and compliance literacy, including customer security reviews, SOC 2, ISO 27001 and data-residency requirements.
- Experience with air-gapped, restricted or sovereign deployments.
- Experience with vendor-boundary support models where responsibility is split across organisations.
Skills
Machine Learning, Kubernetes, DevOps, LLM, Linux, Forward Deployment Engineering, Artificial Intelligence