Forward Deployed Engineer - AI Vision Systems - Quebec, Canada

Forward Deployed Engineer - AI Vision System sRemote | Montreal, QC (preferred) | Full-time

About the role

This is a post-sales, customer-facing deployment role at a fast-growing AI startup building computer vision and predictive systems for manufacturers. The company has grown from 35 to 70 people this year on the back of strong sales momentum, and is now scaling its deployment team to bring those signed customers live.

As a Forward Deployed Engineer, you own the end-to-end technical deployment of AI vision systems into customer manufacturing environments. You will be the primary technical presence on-site, working closely with sales, account management, and a technical project manager to scope, integrate, and deliver working systems - and you won't leave until the product does what was promised.

This is not a role for someone who wants to write code in isolation. You'll be on factory floors, troubleshooting live production environments, training operators, and building trust with customers who are conservative about their technology and their IP.

What you'll do

• Own the full deployment lifecycle for manufacturing customers - from scoping and integration through to production hardening and handover
• Embed with customer operations and IT teams as the primary technical contact on-site
• Install and configure edge AI hardware (NVIDIA Jetson or equivalent) within customer facilities
• Integrate AI vision systems with customer OT/IT stacks including OPC-UA, Modbus, and PLC systems
• Build and iterate data pipelines from edge capture through to cloud - model deployment, monitoring, and feedback loops
• Troubleshoot software, networking, and integration issues in live production environments
• Document architectures and configurations, producing formal handover artifacts for long-term support
• Train customer operators and engineers in both French and English on deployed systems
• Work as a secondary deployment engineer for your first 30-60 days alongside an experienced FDE before taking on your own accounts
• Participate in pre-sales scoping calls and feed field learnings back to the product and engineering team
• Support on-site data collection and annotation as needed

What the work actually looks like

Customers span food manufacturing, building materials, and other industrial sectors. Use cases include defect detection on packaging lines, monitoring for discoloured or malformed products, ergonomic compliance monitoring on factory floors, and employee safety verification. Once deployed, systems feed insights into a customer-facing app that allows plant managers to query production data by shift, line, and time period.

When you're not on-site, you're working remotely. On-site time is estimated at 25-50% depending on active deployments. You'll typically manage one to three accounts at a time depending on complexity.

What you bring

Required

• Production Python development experience with hands-on use of Linux, Docker, and Git in real production environments
• Cloud deployment and operations experience on at least one major platform (AWS, Azure, or GCP)
• Hands-on experience with at least one of: OPC-UA/Modbus/PLC integration, NVIDIA Jetson or equivalent edge AI platforms, or GenICam/industrial vision systems - edge device experience is the strongest preference
• Networking fundamentals for industrial deployments: TCP/IP, VLANs, firewalls
• Experience in a customer-facing engineering role as the primary technical contact for external stakeholders
• Professional working proficiency in both French and English - this means running scoping meetings, customer training sessions, and on-site troubleshooting in French, not just reading docs

Nice to have

• Professional experience in industrial automation or manufacturing environments involving OT/IT integration
• OIQ membership (ing.) or P.Eng. - a genuine nice-to-have, not a hard requirement; the right candidate without it will still be considered

Experience level

No hard floor. The role targets candidates with enough breadth and depth to operate independently on a customer site. That might be four years, it might be more. What matters is that you've shipped and supported real systems in production environments and can handle being the only technical person in the room.

Compensation and benefits

• Base salary: Competitive and commensurate with experience - $120-180k CAD+ (could be more for the right candidate with depth of experience) depending on experience and location within Quebec
• No bonus currently in place; structure under review
• Equity: under development; six-month review process for all new hires
• Benefits kick in at three months
• Three weeks vacation
• Fully remote when not on-site; travel within Quebec expected 25-50% of the time

Interview process

Three stages

• 15-minute check-in with the Talent lead
• Technical interview with the Technical Project Manager (conducted in French)
• 30-minute conversation with the CTO

Location

Montreal, QC strongly preferred. Candidates based elsewhere in Quebec or in Ontario (e.g. Ottawa or Toronto) who are willing to travel to Montreal regularly will also be considered. Must be legally authorized to work in Canada.

Compensation

The base pay range for this role is CA$120,000 - CA$180,000 per year.