Staff Forward Deployed Engineer

Over 50,000 customers globally trust our end-to-end, cloud-driven networking solutions. They rely on our top-rated services and support to accelerate their digital transformation efforts and deliver unprecedented progress.

Become part of something big with Extreme! As a global networking leader, learn why there is no better time to join the Extreme team.

Position details

Title of position: Staff Forward Deployed Engineer

Position type: Full time - Hybrid

Location: Seattle, WA

Position reports to: Director of Software Systems Engineering

Application deadline: Applications are being accepted on a rolling basis and this posting will remain open until filled.

Work authorization: We are unable to sponsor or take over sponsorship of an employment visa, including H-1B visas, at this time

Scope:

Are you energized by solving complex, high-impact problems directly with customers? Do you want to turn emerging technologies in intelligent networking, generative AI, agentic systems, automation, and cloud platforms into production solutions? Do you want what you build and learn in the field to help shape capabilities that benefit customers at scale?

Then come advance with us.

About the Position

Forward Deployed Engineers at Extreme are software engineers who work directly with strategic customers to jointly design, build, validate, and deploy solutions to complex business and technical problems using Extreme's products and platforms.

FDEs operate in real customer environments and own technical outcomes from discovery and solution design through implementation, deployment, and production readiness. The solutions they build must meet demanding requirements for scalability, security, reliability, observability, and operational safety.

This is a deeply technical and hands-on engineering organization. FDEs work directly with customers to understand complex problems and design, build, deploy, and stabilize production solutions using Extreme's products and platforms. They write production software, solve complex systems and integration problems, and own technical outcomes from solution design through production readiness. FDEs also identify platform gaps and define new feature requirements, working with Product teams to incorporate recurring customer needs into Extreme's products and platforms.

About the Role

As a Staff Forward Deployed Engineer, you will be the technical lead for complex customer engagements, owning solutions from discovery and architecture through implementation, deployment, and production readiness.

You will work side by side with customer engineering teams to understand their environment, data, systems, workflows, and technical constraints and turn complex or ambiguous problems into production solutions. Depending on the engagement, these solutions may include agents, applications, integrations, data connectors, APIs, tools, skills, workflows, automation, and supporting infrastructure.

You will remain deeply hands-on while providing technical leadership to other engineers on the engagement. You will also identify reusable patterns and platform gaps that emerge from customer work and help turn those learnings into capabilities that can benefit customers beyond a single engagement.

Key Responsibilities:

• Lead technical discovery with customer engineering teams to understand workflows, systems, data, technical constraints, and desired outcomes.
• Own the architecture and technical delivery of complex customer solutions from solution design through production readiness.
• Write production-quality software and build agents, applications, APIs, integrations, data connectors, tools, skills, workflows, automation, and supporting services as required by the solution.
• Integrate Extreme's products and platforms with customer data sources, identity systems, enterprise applications, APIs, infrastructure, and operational workflows.
• Make architecture and design decisions across applications, AI, data, integrations, security, infrastructure, deployment, and operations.
• Design and implement appropriate testing, evaluations, guardrails, security controls, deployment automation, observability, and operational mechanisms.
• Build solutions that meet production requirements for reliability, scalability, security, performance, maintainability, and cost.
• Diagnose and resolve complex problems across software, AI, data, integrations, networking, and infrastructure.
• Lead technical design and code reviews and provide engineering guidance to engineers working on customer engagements.
• Drive solutions through deployment and stabilization, ensuring agreed production-readiness criteria are met.
• Create technical documentation, architecture guidance, operational runbooks, and other artifacts required to operate and maintain delivered solutions.
• Identify reusable architectures, components, integrations, tools, skills, automation, and engineering patterns that can accelerate future customer deployments.
• Identify platform gaps and define new feature requirements, working with Product teams to incorporate recurring customer needs into Extreme's products and platforms.
• Mentor engineers and contribute to engineering standards and practices across the FDE organization.

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Mathematics, or a related technical discipline, or equivalent practical experience.
• 8+ years of experience across the software development lifecycle, including architecture, design, implementation, testing, deployment, and production operations.
• Strong hands-on software development experience with proficiency in one or more general-purpose programming languages such as Python, Java, Go, TypeScript, C#, or C++.
• Significant experience designing and delivering distributed, cloud-based, or enterprise software systems.
• Experience building production solutions involving AI, automation, data, networking, enterprise integrations, cloud infrastructure, or comparable complex technology domains.
• Strong systems, API, integration, debugging, and software architecture skills.
• Experience taking complex technical solutions from initial requirements and architecture through production deployment.
• Demonstrated ability to operate effectively in ambiguous environments and translate complex problems into pragmatic engineering solutions.
• Experience providing technical leadership through design reviews, architecture decisions, code reviews, or mentoring.
• Experience working directly with customers, partners, or external technical teams.
• Strong written and verbal technical communication skills.
• Ability to travel to customer sites as required by the engagement.

Preferred Qualifications:

• • Master's or PhD in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Machine Learning, or a related discipline.
  • Experience building production generative AI or agentic systems involving tool use, retrieval, planning, orchestration, context management, evaluation, or guardrails.
  • Experience with Model Context Protocol (MCP) and modern agent frameworks.
  • Experience with networking, network management, telemetry, observability, or distributed systems.
  • Experience with cloud-native infrastructure, Kubernetes, containers, infrastructure-as-code, and CI/CD.
  • Experience integrating enterprise identity systems, data platforms, APIs, and operational systems.
  • Experience with distributed data platforms, streaming systems, or real-time processing.
  • Prior experience in Forward Deployed Engineering or another deeply technical customer-facing software engineering role.

Equal Employment Opportunity

• Extreme Networks, Inc. is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or status as a protected veteran. We are committed to taking affirmative action to employ and advance in employment qualified protected veterans, including disabled veterans, recently separated veterans, active-duty wartime or campaign badge veterans, and Armed Forces service medal veterans.
• Extreme Networks also strives to prevent other, subtler forms of inappropriate behavior (for example, stereotyping) from ever gaining a foothold in our organization. Whether blatant or hidden, barriers to success have no place at Extreme Networks. We encourage people from underrepresented groups to apply.

Fair chance and background checks

• Extreme Networks will consider qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with the California Fair Chance Act, Los Angeles Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance, Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, Philadelphia Fair Criminal Record Screening Standards Ordinance, Illinois Human Rights Act, Cook County Human Rights Ordinance, Seattle Fair Chance Employment Ordinance, and the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance. An applicant's conviction history will not be considered until after a conditional offer of employment has been made. Following any individualized assessment, applicants will be provided with the opportunity to respond before any adverse action is taken.
• Extreme Networks does not seek salary history information from applicants and will not rely on salary history in determining whether to offer employment or in setting compensation.