Forward Deployed Engineer

Job description

Your Role at Nutrient... As a Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) on our Sales team, your work starts with a customer: You will find the document problem that is actually costing them money, and build the working solution yourself, on their documents, that works with or within their environment, against a scorecard we agree on before we start. Then you will turn what you built into something the next customer can buy ready made. We commit to the specific outcome for the customer, and we then measure how much of each engagement converts into actual product. Here’s how this role is different: If you are a solutions engineer today, the difference is that you ship. If you are a professional services engineer today, the difference is that the work is not billed by the hour against a spec someone else wrote, and success is not a signed-off SOW but a customer outcome and a reusable capability in the product. If you are a product engineer today, the difference is that your users are in the room, on the call, and occasionally disagreeing with you. This is a role for someone who is genuinely comfortable in all three chairs: the discovery conversation where you work out what job the customer is actually trying to get done, the terminal where you build it by Friday, and the seat at the table when the product is being meaningfully developed. What You'll Work On... Discover the problem before anyone scopes it . Get into the customer's process deeply enough to state the job to be done in their words. Most engagements start because someone asked for a feature; the work is finding the outcome behind the request. Build the first implementation yourself . Working software on the customer's own documents and in their own environment if necessary, fast enough that the demo lands while the problem is still urgent. A prototype that shows beats a deck that tells, and a working solution closes the deal. Agree a scorecard upfront and hit it. Every engagement starts with a written definition of what success looks like and how it will be measured. We commit to that result. Stitch across the whole platform . Real solutions cut across Nutrient Workflow, Document Engine, our Document Web Services APIs, the Web and native SDKs, AI data extraction, and whatever the customer already runs. Recent engagements have meant SharePoint and Salesforce integrations, AWS Bedrock models, .NET services behind consistent-hash routing, bulk export pipelines, and database archiving. Productize what you build . Choose the implementation that makes the next customer easier, not the one that closes fastest. In a recent engagement we deliberately built a cover-sheet generator on AI Data Extraction rather than a SQL script, and that task is now stronger for every customer. Several deliverables from that engagement are now licensable product components and self-service features. Close the loop back into the company . Write up what you learned, file the defects you hit, articulate the pattern so the next engagement starts from it, and hand the template to the next team. Forward deployed work that stays inside one account is just consulting. Support the deal . You will work alongside account executives and solutions engineers before the contract as well as after it. What you build during the sales cycle is often what decides whether we win. What You'll Bring... The shortest description of the profile: a strong software engineer who has moved toward product thinking — you care about the problem, not the ticket — and who is unusually good with customers. You live in a world that exists beyond technical requirements and can quickly go into solution mode to deliver a working solution. You are likely a good fit if most of the following are true: You can run a discovery conversation. You ask about the business process before the API, and you can tell the difference between a use case and a job to be done. You get real leverage out of coding agents. Our customers expect the first working version in days, not sprints, and that only happens if you direct agents well. You have shipped production software for years, and you still build. You are comfortable being the only engineer on a problem and being a part of a team that delivers the solution. You are fluent in at least one of JavaScript or TypeScript, .NET/C#, Java, Python or Go, and you pick up the others without drama. You can stand up and reason about infrastructure: containers, Kubernetes, at least one of AWS, Azure or GCP, reverse proxies and load balancing, Postgres, Redis. You have worked with LLMs in production, not only in a notebook. Prompt and retrieval design, evaluating extraction quality, cost and latency tuning. You write well. Design docs, scorecards, handover notes and customer-facing summaries are part of the output, not overhead. It would be nice if you have: Document technology background : PDF internals, OCR, layout-aware extraction, e-signature flows, redaction. Domain time in heavily regulated industries , such as banking KYC, insurance claims, or healthcare and life sciences. Experience in a forward deployed, solutions architecture or founding-engineer role at an infrastructure or platform company . Consulting or agency background , if you left it because you wanted the work to compound. Integration experience with the systems enterprises actually run, such as SharePoint, Salesforce, Power Automate, or an internal system nobody has documented since 2011. Comfort working with regulated environments and the conversations that come with them, such as HIPAA, FedRAMP, FIPS, and government cloud. Be honest with yourself — this is probably not for you if: You want a clean backlog and a quiet quarter. Early engagements will be ambiguous and the team's boundaries with Engineering and Professional Services are still being drawn. You prefer to hand off after the design. Here you build it. You would rather build the perfect bespoke thing than the slightly less perfect thing three more customers can use. Also… Your first 90 days : By day 30 you will have shadowed two live engagements and shipped one small thing a customer uses. By day 60 you will own an engagement end to end, from discovery through the agreed scorecard. By day 90 at least one thing you built will be on its way into the product as a template or a component, and you will have written up why. How we will measure your impact : Customer outcomes against the scorecards you agreed, revenue influenced through the engagements you run, and the share of your work that converts into reusable product rather than staying in one account. That last one is the number that keeps Nutrient a software company. Team and location : You will join the Forward Deployed Engineering team, reporting into Sales, working daily with Engineering and the Account teams. We are hiring in Raleigh, NC and in London. Expect meaningful travel to customer sites, concentrated in bursts around engagement kickoffs. Who Thrives Here... At Nutrient, we’re not just hiring for skills — we’re hiring for mindset. The people who thrive here are: Collaborators : You collaborate openly, listen actively, and prioritize team success over ego. Hungry Learners : Rapid learning fuels progress and career growth. Curious Thinkers : You dig deep to uncover the “why,” valuing understanding over simply being right. Self-Starters : You take action without waiting for direction, turning obstacles into opportunities with creativity and persistence. Owners : You take responsibility for solutions and outcomes, always looking for ways to improve what’s within your control. Doers : You’re energized by progress, motivated to create meaningful impact, and eager to tackle challenges. Why You'll Love Working Here... At Nutrient, we build tools that reshape how businesses and developers work with documents. Our culture is centered on continuous growth and collaboration. Every team member has room to learn, innovate, and drive meaningful impact. Real technical ownership: you're not just managing relationships; you're running technical discovery, building POCs, and being the engineer in the room for your customers. Cross-functional influence: your work sits at the intersection of CS, Solutions Architecture, and Support, with a direct line to shape product direction through customer advocacy. Distributed and async-first: minimal meetings, strong writing culture, and the independence to manage your own work. Mission-critical product: Nutrient's platform is trusted by 15%+ of the Global 500 across 80+ countries. Strong growth trajectory: ARR grown from $28M to $49M over the past two years, backed by Insight Partners. Nutrient believes in equal opportunity. We employ people from many cultures and countries, celebrate diversity, and are committed to building a team that represents a variety of backgrounds, skill sets, and perspectives. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, age, marital status, national origin, ancestry, physical or mental disability, medical condition, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other non-merit factor. About Nutrient At Nutrient, we're revolutionizing how the world works with documents. Our tools transform static files into intelligent, secure workflows, empowering businesses to innovate faster and smarter. Trusted by thousands of organizations across 80 countries, including Fortune 500 companies and public sector leaders, our platform supports nearly a billion end users globally in industries where documents aren't just files, they're mission-critical.