Forward Deployed Engineer, Platform

SurrealDB is on the lookout for platform engineers to join our bench of Forward Deployed Engineers, working inside enterprise customers’ engineering teams to deploy, integrate and run SurrealDB and SurrealDB Agent Memory in production. Few people have years of SurrealDB or agent memory experience, so we care more about solid engineering habits and how fast you learn than years on a CV. We train and certify every Forward Deployed Engineer before they go to a customer.

In this role, you will own the platform side of a customer build: environments, data, integration and the non-functional requirements that decide whether a system can go live. You will pair with an Agentic Systems Engineer who owns the agent and memory design, and on most engagements you will be the technical lead for the pair. You will report to a SurrealDB engineering manager, who assigns your work, sets technical direction and supports your progress, while an engagement manager handles delivery updates to the customer.

About this engagement

• Contract role, starting in November or December 2026 and running for around three months, full time
• Open to applicants based in the UK or the US
• Working US Eastern hours, including for UK-based consultants
• You will work on customer-provided equipment and complete a background check before starting
• Occasional on-site travel may be required
• Our client will make the final selection. If you are not selected for this particular engagement, we will consider you for our bench of approved contractors for future opportunities

Based outside the UK or US? We are also building our bench for future customer work, open to engineers around the world. You can apply through our Forward Deployed Engineer, Contractor Network role [link]

What you'll be doing

• Ownership for designing and standing up SurrealDB and Agent Memory environments on the customer's cloud or on SurrealDB Cloud: topology, networking, identity, secrets and access
• Responsible for data modelling in SurrealQL across documents, graph relations and vectors, and for query and index tuning
• Leading on CI/CD and infrastructure as code (Terraform or OpenTofu) for customer environments
• Building ingestion and migration pipelines from existing stores such as Cosmos DB, Postgres, MongoDB, vector databases or search services
• Responsible for observability, backup, upgrades, security reviews and performance testing, including agent memory services and their dependencies
• Documenting progress and risks for the weekly status report, plus runbooks and reference infrastructure for future engagements
• Contributing to customer architecture and security questionnaires with the SurrealDB team

About you

Hands-on experience of deploying or integrating at least one agent memory tool, such as Mem0, Graphiti/Zep, Letta, LangMem or Cognee (a personal or open-source project counts)

• Proven experience of running services on at least one major cloud: AWS, Azure or GCP
• Strong technical background in containers, Kubernetes and infrastructure as code (Terraform, OpenTofu or Pulumi)
• Experience in database work beyond basic CRUD: data modelling, indexes, query plans and migrations
• Working knowledge of at least one of Python, TypeScript, Go or Rust
• Ability to explain technical decisions clearly to customer engineers, architects and security teams
• Ability to work hours that overlap with the customer, often US Eastern Time, and to complete a customer background check
• Living in the UK or US with existing right to work there; we do not sponsor visas
• Familiarity with SurrealDB, Azure (AKS, Entra ID, Key Vault), observability stacks or regulated environments is a strong plus; community contributors and SurrealDB Ambassadors are encouraged to apply

We understand that each candidate brings a unique set of skills and experiences, and we encourage applicants to apply even if you do not meet every qualification listed in the job description.