Forward Deployed Engineer

Madhive is the leading independent and fully customizable operating system built to help local media professionals build profitable, differentiated, and efficient businesses. Madhive empowers sales teams to extend their reach into streaming and connects local advertisers with the communities they serve. Madhive’s platform provides the unique ability to reach local audiences at national scale, with premium supply partnerships and end-to-end tools for planning, targeting, and measuring full-funnel campaign outcomes. Powering campaigns for over 30,000 small and medium businesses per day, Madhive is driving the evolution of local media.

Forward Deployed Engineer

About the Role

As a Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) at MadHive, you are a hybrid technical leader operating at the intersection of solution architecture, executive client partnership, and hands-on engineering.

You serve as the technical cornerstone for our most strategic enterprise clients. Your role is to understand the client's deepest business challenges, architect scalable technical solutions using MadHive’s infrastructure, and build the trusted relationships required to guide them through complex digital transformations. While you are a capable solutions architect / coder who can integrate systems, you are equally a strategist and a trusted advisor.

You thrive in ambiguous environments, possessing the executive presence to align client leadership and the technical chops to enable the Madhive technologies that accelerate time-to-value. You will report to the Senior Director of Client Solutions.

This is a hybrid role, working 3 days a week at Madhive HQ in the Financial District of New York City with travel to other Madhive locations or clients approximately 25-50%.

Core Responsibilities

• Enterprise Solutioning & Architecture

  • Strategic Systems Design: Lead technical discovery and whiteboard sessions with enterprise clients to map their business objectives to comprehensive, end-to-end technical architectures.

  • Workflow Optimization: Analyze client legacy systems, data landscapes, and operational bottlenecks, designing solutions that seamlessly embed MadHive’s platform (DSP, Workflow) into their existing ecosystem.

  • Unblock Technical Hurdles: Act as the ultimate technical problem solver, designing pragmatic workarounds and custom implementation strategies for unique client constraints.

• Client Relationship & Stakeholder Management

  • Trusted Technical Advisor: Serve as the primary technical face of MadHive for your assigned clients. Build deep, lasting relationships with client stakeholders ranging from AdOps managers to CTOs and VPs of Engineering.

  • Expectation Management: Navigate complex client dynamics, manage technical expectations, and align client business goals with MadHive’s delivery timelines.

  • Cross-Functional Leadership: Partner closely with internal MadHive teams (Sales, Client Success, Product, and Core Engineering) to ensure a unified front and seamless client experience from pre-sales through long-term stabilization.

• Pragmatic Execution (The "Connective Tissue")

  • Product Feedback Loop: Synthesize your on-the-ground technical learnings. When custom code or workflows show recurring value across multiple clients, collaborate with Product & Core Engineering to translate those solutions into scalable core platform features.

  • Tie together all technical aspects such as problem solving, bug remediation, release planning and management, and new feature rollout in a cohesive comprehensive plan.

  • User, Advocate, Expert, and Enabler of AI technologies in the Madhive eco system and adtech domain.

  • Rapid Prototyping: Build functional prototypes, automation scripts, and lightweight tooling to accelerate onboarding and prove technical feasibility during critical deployment phases.

What We Look For (Requirements)

• Hybrid Experience

  • 4+ years of experience in a client-facing technical role such as Solutions Architecture, Forward Deployed Engineering, Technical Consulting, or high-level Sales Engineering.

• Architectural Mindset

  • Deep understanding of enterprise systems integration, AdTech integrations and value propositions, and complex data workflows.

• Programming Background

  • Advanced SQL & Data Wrangler: Possess mastery of SQL (complex joins, advanced queries, reporting, and troubleshooting) paired with a "data wrangler" mindset. You don't just query data; you dive deep to understand the underlying schema, map complex data flows in your head, and master new datasets quickly and translate into meaningful reports and analytics.

  • Big Data Fluency: Comfortably navigate, manipulate, and extract value from massive, complex datasets scaling up to the petabyte level across numerous disparate tables.

  • 3-5 years of adtech/programmatic experience and ability to demonstrate comprehensive knowledge of the adtech ecosystem, including programmatic buying, data management, and campaign optimization

  • API, AI, martech eco system integrations awareness and proficiency. Ability to solution and prototype integrations with various martech platforms.

  • A subject matter expert leading hands-on with technical know-how, helping to determine methods and procedures on new product features and providing leadership to product managers or engineers.

• Cross-Functional AI Evangelism

  • Bridge the gap between technical AI innovation and tangible business outcomes, partnering with GTM, Success, and Product squads to articulate value.

• Strategic Technical Demonstrations

  • Showcase how Maverick AI revolutionizes hand-off efficiency and multi-channel attribution for premier enterprise clients.

• High EQ & Executive Presence

  • Exceptional communication skills. You can explain highly complex technical concepts to a non-technical CRO, and then pivot to debate integration concepts, API payloads, and other technical details with a client-side developer.

• Ambiguity Tolerance

  • Proven ability to navigate unstructured client environments and drive clarity and consensus among divergent stakeholders.

• Industry Knowledge

  • Background in AdTech (DSP, SSP, broadcasting, programmatic advertising) is a massive plus.

How We Measure Success

Client Trust & Health: Your clients view you as an indispensable extension of their own technical team, reflected in smooth implementations and high retention.

Time-to-Value: Drastically reducing the timeline from a signed contract to a fully operational, revenue-generating technical integration.

Balanced Delivery: Successfully delivering complex solutions that require a blend of strategic relationship management and hands-on technical execution

The approximate compensation range for this position is $180,000-$200,000. The actual offer, reflecting the total compensation package and benefits, will be determined by a number of factors, including the applicant's experience, knowledge, skills, and abilities, as well as internal equity among our team.

We are Madhive

Madhive is a dynamic, diverse, innovative, and friendly place to work. We embrace our differences and believe they fuel our creativity. We come from varied backgrounds and think that’s important. Whether it’s taking ideas from previous lives and applying them in different ways or creating something completely new, we are all trail-blazing team players who think big and want to make an impact.

We are committed to cultivating a culture of inclusion and collaboration. We welcome diversity in education, culture, opinions, race, ethnicity, gender identity, veteran status, religion, disability, sexual orientation, and beliefs.

Please be advised that we will NOT be using third-party recruiting agencies for this search.