Forward Deployed Engineer
northwoodspace2 months ago
Washington, DC, USASenior
Base Salary
$170k - $225k/yr
Responsibilities
- Serve as the primary technical contact for customers during capture, evaluation, onboarding, and post-deployment.
- Work directly with customers and Engineering on implementation, integration, bring-up, troubleshooting, and operational validation.
- Ship code, debug integrations, and validate customer operations alongside customers and Engineering.
- Support Business Development with qualification, proposals, and expansion activities.
- Lead technical discovery, exchanges, demos, and readiness reviews with Program Management.
- Learn customers’ missions, workflows, constraints, decision criteria, and success metrics in depth.
- Translate customer needs into priorities for Engineering, Product, and Business Development.
- Identify friction points, adoption blockers, and recurring needs that should influence the product and network.
- Coordinate onboarding and deployment readiness by clarifying requirements, flagging risks, and aligning internal teams.
- Create reusable discovery frameworks and customer-facing materials to help scale capture and customer success.
Requirements
- 7+ years of experience in customer-facing technical roles such as solutions or systems engineering, mission operations, technical business development, capture engineering, solutions architecture, or technical account management.
- Bachelor’s degree in EE, CE, CS, Aerospace, or a related field, or equivalent experience with mission systems, ground systems, networking, cloud, or satellite operations.
- Track record of taking complex customer engagements from discovery through deployment or expansion.
- Ability to build trust with technical customers and translate ambiguous mission needs into concrete priorities.
- Comfort working across hardware, software, networking, and business objectives in ambiguous environments.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills, including leading technical conversations, writing customer materials, and briefing internal stakeholders.
- Ability to work effectively with Business Development, Engineering, Product, Program Management, and customer teams.
- Preferred experience in satellite communications, RF, space operations, ground stations, or telecom infrastructure.
- Preferred experience with proposals, technical evaluations, demos, pilots, proof-of-concept work, and technical relationships in mission-critical environments.
- Familiarity with APIs, networking protocols, telemetry, scheduling systems, cloud infrastructure, or mission assurance is preferred.
- Ability to obtain or hold TS/SCI clearance; successful attainment and maintenance of a Top Secret Security Clearance is required.
- Must be willing to travel up to 30%, work on-site five days per week, and work extended hours and weekends as needed.
- Must meet applicable U.S. Government space technology export-control eligibility requirements.
Benefits
- Equity, comprehensive medical, vision, and dental coverage, flexible spending accounts, flexible time off, 10 or more paid holidays per year, retirement savings plans, and professional development opportunities.
- The role is on-site five days per week and requires travel up to 30%.
- The position requires obtaining and maintaining a Top Secret Security Clearance and may require extended hours and weekends.
Categories
Forward Deployed
About northwoodspace
Taking space missions further faster. Check out our open roles: https://www.northwoodspace.io/careers