Senior Forward Deployed Engineer
About Keyfactor
Our mission is to securely connect the world: humans, machines, and AI. Keyfactor is the leader in trust infrastructure for AI and machines, helping the world's largest enterprises and government agencies take control of the cryptographic identities that safeguard every digital interaction. Behind the platform is a global team of people who care deeply about the work and each other. We move fast, think big, and show up for one another every day. If you're looking for work that matters and a team that brings out your best, we hope you'll trust your future with Keyfactor!
Title: Senior Forward Deployed Engineer
Location: United States; Hybrid (Cleveland area preferred)
Experience: Senior level
Job Function: Professional Services
Employment Type: Full-Time
Industry: Computer & Network Security
Travel Requirements: 25%
About the position
The Senior Forward Deployed Engineer is a highly experienced technical practitioner responsible for designing, deploying, and troubleshooting complex customer solutions. This role partners closely with customers and teams across Professional Services, Sales Engineering, Product, and Engineering to solve challenging technical problems and ensure successful deployments.
The Senior FDE brings deep technical expertise to customer engagements, serves as a trusted technical advisor, and helps translate real-world customer requirements and field insights into improvements across our products and delivery practices. This role also contributes to reusable architectures, integration patterns, and technical best practices while providing guidance and mentorship to other technical team members.
Job Responsibilities
- Lead the technical design and execution of complex customer solutions and deployments.
- Assess technical feasibility, architecture, risks, dependencies, and integration requirements across customer environments.
- Troubleshoot and resolve complex technical and deployment challenges, partnering with Product and Engineering as needed.
- Serve as a senior technical resource and escalation point for challenging customer engagements.
- Develop and contribute to reusable reference architectures, integration patterns, tools, and technical best practices.
- Identify recurring technical challenges in the field and collaborate with Product, Engineering, and delivery teams to develop scalable solutions.
- Translate customer requirements and field insights into actionable product feedback and technical recommendations.
- Provide technical guidance throughout the customer lifecycle, from late-stage presales through implementation and production deployment.
- Serve as a trusted technical advisor to customers and cross-functional stakeholders.
- Mentor and provide technical guidance to FDEs and other technical team members.
- Contribute to improvements in deployment consistency, scalability, and customer time-to-value.
- Collaborate across Professional Services, Sales Engineering, Product, and Engineering to improve the overall customer experience.
Minimum Qualifications, Education, and Skills
- Significant experience designing and deploying enterprise security, cloud, infrastructure, or SaaS solutions in complex customer environments.
- Strong expertise in enterprise integrations, APIs, distributed systems, networking, identity, security, and cloud technologies.
- Proven ability to independently diagnose and resolve complex and ambiguous technical challenges.
- Experience across solution architecture, presales, implementation, and production deployment.
- Experience developing or contributing to reusable technical architectures, integration patterns, tools, or best practices.
- Strong customer-facing communication skills with the ability to communicate complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences.
- Demonstrated ability to collaborate with and influence Product, Engineering, and other cross-functional teams without direct authority.
- Ability to operate with a high degree of autonomy while effectively managing multiple complex customer engagements.
- Experience mentoring or providing technical guidance to other technical practitioners.
#LI-NA1
Compensation
Salary will be commensurate with experience.
Culture, Career Opportunities and Benefits
We build teams that continually strive to get better than the day before. You will be challenged daily and given opportunities to grow personally and professionally. We balance autonomy and structure to create an entrepreneurial environment to spur creativity and new ideas.
Here are just some of the initiatives that make our culture special:
- Second Fridays (a company-wide day off on the second Friday of every month minus November and December due to the Holiday schedule). Please note that this benefit is subject to change.
- Comprehensive benefit coverage globally.
- Paid Parental Leave is available to new parents. Structure varies based on regional/government requirements. In regions where government-paid leave doesn’t exist, like in the U.S., the company offers generous paid parental leave, along with comprehensive adoption and fertility support.
- Competitive time off globally.
- Dedicated employee-focused ambassadors via Key Contributors & Culture Committees.
- DIVERSE Commitment, a call to action for a more inclusive and diverse future in business, society, and technology.
- The Keyfactor Alliance Program to support DEIB efforts.
- Wellbeing resources, wellness allowance, mindfulness app free membership, Wellness Wednesdays.
- Global Volunteer Day, company non-profit matching, and 3 volunteer days off.
- Monthly Talent development and Cross Functional meetings to support professional development.
- Regular All Hands meetings - followed by group gatherings.
Our Core Values
Our core values are extremely important to how we run our business and what we look for in every team member:
Trustis paramount.
We deliver security software and solutions where trust and openness are of the highest importance for our customers. We are honest and a trusted partner in every aspect of business.
Customersare core.
We strategize, operate, and execute through a customer-centric view. We prioritize the security interests of our customers, and we act as if their data were our own.
Innovationnever stops, it only accelerates.
The speed of change is accelerating. We are committed, through investment and focus, to stay ahead of the innovation curve.
We deliver withagility.
We thrive in high-paced and continually changing environments. We navigate through newly added variables, adjust accordingly, while driving towards our strategic goals.
United byrespect.
Respect for all is what unites us. We promote diversity, inclusivity, equity, and acting with empathy and openness, both in our business and in our communities.
Teamsmake “it” happen.
Vision and goals are not individually achievable - they require teamwork. We pride ourselves in operating as a cohesive team, creating promoters and partners, and winning as one.
Keyfactor is a proud equal opportunity employer including but not limited to veterans and individuals with disabilities.
REASONABLE ACCOMMODATION: Applicants with disabilities may contact a member of Keyfactor’s People team via [email protected] and/or telephone at 1.216.785.2990 to request and arrange for accommodations at any time.