Forward Deployed Software Engineer

The Role

Forward Deployed Software Engineers (FDSEs) work directly with customers to quickly understand their greatest problems and design and implement solutions to use data against them. Our customers rely on Palantir’s platforms for some of their most critical operations, and projects often start with an open ended question like “Why are we delaying so many flights?” or “How can we better identify instances of money laundering?” As an FDSE, you’ll apply your problem solving ability, creativity, and technical skills to help organizations use their data to drive a real impact in the world. You’ll have the opportunity to gain rare insight into and contribute to some of the world’s most important industries and institutions.

As an FDSE your responsibilities look similar to those of a startup CTO: you’ll work in small teams with minimal supervision and own end-to-end execution of high stakes projects. Your day might span discussing architecture with fellow engineers, wrangling massive-scale data, coding a custom web app, speaking with customer executives, or establishing strategy for your team.

Whether you aspire to be an entrepreneur or an engineering leader, we believe Palantir is the best place - with the best colleagues - to learn how. You’ll learn how to unpack a problem and understand the costs and consequences of its solution. You’ll learn new technologies and languages, and even develop them yourself. You’ll work autonomously and make decisions independently, within a community that will support and challenge you as you grow and develop.

Our Principles

• Impact: We take on meaningful and challenging projects that change the world for the better.
• Ownership: We see projects through from beginning to end, working through any obstacles we may encounter.
• Collaboration: We work internally with people from a variety of backgrounds - such as other FDSEs, product teams, and Deployment Strategists. We also work externally with our customers, often on site, to understand and solve their problems.
• Trust: We trust each other to effectively manage time and priorities and give people the space to think for themselves.
• Growth: We encourage ourselves and our peers to seek new challenges and opportunities for growth, as well as find new ways to innovate and share knowledge.
• Learning: We often face entirely novel problems where we need to pick up a lot of new knowledge and learn how to use it to make progress. We believe experiential learning is one of the best teachers.

What We Value

• Strong engineering background, preferred in fields such as Computer Science, Mathematics, Software Engineering, Physics, and Data Science.
• A highly analytical mindset and eagerness to solve technical problems with data structures, storage systems, cloud infrastructure, front-end frameworks, and other technical tools.
• Experience or interest in working with and using large scale data to solve valuable business problems.
• Strong coder with demonstrated proficiency in programming languages such as Python, Java, C++, TypeScript/JavaScript, or similar.
• Demonstrated ability to collaborate effectively in teams of technical and non-technical individuals, and comfortable working in a rapidly changing environment with dynamic objectives and iteration with users.
• Ability to continuously learn, work independently, and make decisions with minimal supervision.
• Willingness and interest to travel as needed to client sites. Ability to travel 25-50% preferred, but requirements vary by team and location.