Forward Deployed Engineer

Key areas of responsibility

Key skills, experience and behaviours

Responsibilities

• Customer & problem discovery
• Embed with customers and end users to understand their missions, workflows, technical environments and operational challenges.
• Observe how users work in practice and identify problems or opportunities that may not emerge through traditional requirements gathering.
• Translate loosely defined customer problems into clear technical requirements, hypotheses and achievable outcomes.
• Build strong relationships with users and become a trusted technical partner who understands both their operational needs and Dovetail's technology.
• Solution design & engineering
• Design pragmatic technical solutions using Dovetail products alongside customer systems and third-party technologies.
• Rapidly develop prototypes and proof-of-concepts to test ideas with customers and validate technical approaches.
• Develop integrations, scripts, tooling, configuration and supporting software required to make deployments successful.
• Work across software, APIs, data, infrastructure and networks to solve end-to-end technical problems.
• Adapt solutions to customer environments, including those with challenging infrastructure, security, connectivity or operational constraints.
• Make appropriate engineering trade-offs between speed, robustness, security, maintainability and customer needs.
• Deployment & operational ownership
• Take hands-on ownership of deploying Dovetail products into customer environments.
• Spend significant periods working directly from customer sites, particularly during discovery, trials, integration and deployment.
• Configure, integrate, deploy, test and troubleshoot Dovetail products across cloud, on-premise and potentially disconnected or edge environments.
• Diagnose technical issues across the full stack, resolving problems directly or working with specialist Engineering teams where required.
• Product feedback & development
• Act as the technical link between customers in the field and Dovetail's Product and Engineering teams.
• Capture structured feedback, technical findings and lessons from deployments.
• Identify recurring customer requirements and opportunities to improve Dovetail's products.
• Reproduce field issues and provide Engineering teams with clear technical evidence and context.
• Customer & problem discovery - Embed with customers and end users to understand their missions, workflows, technical environments and operational challenges. - Observe how users work in practice and identify problems or opportunities that may not emerge through traditional requirements gathering. - Translate loosely defined customer problems into clear technical requirements, hypotheses and achievable outcomes. - Build strong relationships with users and become a trusted technical partner who understands both their operational needs and Dovetail's technology. Solution design & engineering - Design pragmatic technical solutions using Dovetail products alongside customer systems and third-party technologies. - Rapidly develop prototypes and proof-of-concepts to test ideas with customers and validate technical approaches. - Develop integrations, scripts, tooling, configuration and supporting software required to make deployments successful. - Work across software, APIs, data, infrastructure and networks to solve end-to-end technical problems. - Adapt solutions to customer environments, including those with challenging infrastructure, security, connectivity or operational constraints. - Make appropriate engineering trade-offs between speed, robustness, security, maintainability and customer needs. Deployment & operational ownership - Take hands-on ownership of deploying Dovetail products into customer environments. - Spend significant periods working directly from customer sites, particularly during discovery, trials, integration and deployment. - Configure, integrate, deploy, test and troubleshoot Dovetail products across cloud, on-premise and potentially disconnected or edge environments. - Diagnose technical issues across the full stack, resolving problems directly or working with specialist Engineering teams where required. Product feedback & development - Act as the technical link between customers in the field and Dovetail's Product and Engineering teams. - Capture structured feedback, technical findings and lessons from deployments. - Identify recurring customer requirements and opportunities to improve Dovetail's products. - Reproduce field issues and provide Engineering teams with clear technical evidence and context.

Skills

• Essential
• Strong software engineering fundamentals, with practical programming experience in Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, Go, Java or similar.
• Strong understanding of Linux, networking, APIs and modern software development practices.
• Experience integrating, deploying and troubleshooting software across cloud and/or on-premises environments.
• Familiarity with containerisation and deployment technologies such as Docker and Kubernetes.
• Experience working directly with customers or end users to understand problems and deliver technical solutions.
• Strong problem-solving skills, with the ability to work through ambiguous or changing requirements and make pragmatic technical decisions.
• Able to communicate complex technical concepts clearly across Engineering teams, customer technical teams and end users.
• Comfortable taking end-to-end ownership of technical problems, from initial discovery through to deployment and resolution.
• Desirable
• Experience deploying or supporting systems in live operational or mission-critical environments.
• Experience with one or more of AI/ML, data engineering, geospatial systems or edge computing.
• Experience deploying solutions into disconnected, bandwidth-constrained or otherwise challenging environments.
• Experience working in defence, national security, emergency services or critical infrastructure.