Forward Deployed Engineer — Strategic Solutions, Integration & Delivery

Job description

Verdigris Forward Deployed Engineers (FDEs) sit at the point where the platform meets the customer's electrical environment, and own turning that intersection into working technical outcomes — from first technical conversation through deployment, commissioning, and long-term account success. This is a dual-hat, principal-level role: an engineer who embeds directly with strategic accounts, builds and adapts solutions in the field, and carries the authority and accountability to drive those solutions to completion. This is a technical delivery leadership role, not the account's strategic or commercial leadership — that ownership sits with Sales/Client Success. The FDE partners closely with the account's strategic owner, but owns getting the technical solution live, adopted, and delivering value. Technical depth is only half of what makes this role work. Equally important is how you show up with people: this is a dynamic, communicative, trust-building presence in front of customers — someone who earns confidence with stakeholders ranging from field electricians to executive sponsors through clear communication and relationship-building, not technical correctness alone. The strongest Verdigris FDEs are remembered as much for the trust they built as for the systems they commissioned. At this level, the role extends beyond a single account or project. A Principal FDE is expected to raise the bar for the whole Solutions Engineering function — setting the technical standard other engineers are measured against, mentoring less-experienced engineers, and negotiating the most ambitious account and departmental objectives. You are the connective tissue between Sales, Product/Engineering, and Education, Support & Services (ESS) — and between Verdigris and the electricians, installers, integrators, and customer engineering teams who put our hardware in the field — and increasingly, you are also the person other engineers and other teams come to when a problem doesn't have an obvious owner. ### Where this role lives The role spans two teams, each with the following mandate: - z2o (Zero-to-One) — Forward-Deployed Solutions Engineering. New-logo pilots, Signals evidence, rapid prototyping, internal tooling, product discovery, and integration evaluation — with a mandate to identify which of these should become a department-wide capability rather than a one-off. - SigEv / ESS — Forward-Deployed Solutions Engineering + Implementation. Signals Evidence pilots for existing accounts, plus end-to-end implementation ownership and field delivery for those accounts, including the most technically or politically complex engagements in the portfolio. ### Account Coverage & Collaboration Model This role's initial lane of coverage spans: - Abcam - T-Mobile Bellevue - NASA - The broader T-Mobile/Verizon pipeline Coverage here is opportunity-level, not blanket account-level. Within any of these accounts, this role may be the technical Driver on one opportunity while a peer FDE or Solutions Engineer drives a different opportunity in the same account, depending on scope, timeline, and specialization needed. Complex accounts like these genuinely benefit from more than one technical perspective, and collaboration across FDEs on shared accounts is expected and encouraged — it is not treated as lane-crossing. Each opportunity uses a DACI (Driver, Approver, Contributor, Informed) to keep roles unambiguous: - Driver — owns the technical outcome for that specific opportunity; typically the assigned FDE. - Approver — signs off on scope, risk, or delivery decisions at key checkpoints (the FDE's manager or an account executive sponsor, depending on stakes). - Contributor — other FDEs, Solutions Engineers, or specialists (e.g., data center electrical expertise, a specific integration) who bring relevant expertise without owning the outcome. - Informed — ESS, Sales, and account leadership who need visibility into status and risk but aren't making the call. Account-level relationship ownership continues to sit with Sales/Client Success, consistent with the role's framing above; the DACI operates at the opportunity level underneath that relationship. **This role spans z2o and SigEv/ESS.** Reports to: Seren Coskun (SigEv) and Jimit Shah (z2o). Dotted-line coordination is expected with the other FDEs and Solutions Engineers sharing opportunities in the accounts above, and with the Sales/Client Success owners of those accounts. ### Authority & Accountability The implementation/delivery half of this role requires real, recognized authority — not just task execution. As a Principal-level engineer, the role holder is expected to: - Own project execution end-to-end for the most complex assigned accounts and be accountable for outcomes (timeline, commissioning success, closeout), exercising independent judgment on methods and evaluation criteria where the right approach isn't obvious. - Operate independently against established playbooks and known patterns — once a method is proven, you're expected to run with it without being walked through it each time, because you know how it's done. Independent judgment is for the genuinely novel cases; the routine ones shouldn't need hand-holding from above. - Direct and coordinate third-party installers, electricians, and integrators, and make field decisions on configuration, sequencing, and issue resolution. - Decide when to execute personally versus when to coordinate a partner (systems integrator, contractor, vendor) to do the work — your judgment includes knowing when directing a partner gets a better or faster outcome than doing it yourself. - Remove blockers — including by engaging customer stakeholders and contractors directly — and escalate cross-team dependencies with a clear decision path. - Be the recognized point of accountability customers and partners go to for the project's technical delivery. - Negotiate and own the most aggressive account and delivery objectives the department carries, and help set the quality and capability benchmarks other Solutions Engineers and projects are held to. - Be sought out — inside Solutions Engineering and by adjacent teams (e.g. Product), as a source of technical judgment on problems that don't have a clear owner yet. ### Key responsibilities ## A. Forward-Deployed Engineering, Discovery & Advisory (z2o + SigEv/ESS) - Run technical discovery of customer operational and electrical environments, and act as the trusted technical advisor across the pre-sales process and the full account lifecycle — building the kind of rapport that keeps stakeholders engaged through a long delivery cycle, not just answering technical questions. - Design and run Signals pilots and proofs of value on customer equipment, and produce the technical analysis that turns pilot outputs into a clear business case. - Produce customer-facing technical analysis and reports — including waveform and power-quality analysis (e.g., diagnosing voltage/sensing anomalies and generator-transfer events) — that demonstrate platform value and build customer credibility. - Advise customer and partner architecture teams on building against Verdigris APIs (app notes, reference scripts, auth/credentialing, integration design). - Define diagnostic logic with customers (e.g., Signals / FDD rules such as power-loss notifications) and hand requirements to Engineering for productization. - Build tools, prototypes, and interim solutions that unlock value fast and scope long-term productization — and make the build-fast-vs-build-right call explicitly, documenting the tradeoff for others to learn from. - Lead technical demos, POCs, and integration/vendor evaluations (e.g., third-party connector and integrator assessments). - Contribute to z2o sprints, product discovery, and Signals enablement — and represent Solutions Engineering's perspective in cross-functional roadmap discussions. - Pilot and apply AI agents within your own delivery work — account prep, executive-ready narratives and reports, and other places agent workflows multiply your output — treating this as core leverage rather than a side experiment; this is how one person covers ground that used to take a layer of people. ## B. Implementation Oversight & Value Delivery (SigEv/ESS) Ownership here is defined in terms of value delivered, not just equipment installed. The engagement isn't “done” at commissioning — it's done when the customer is realizing first value from the platform. - Own technical delivery and project execution for assigned opportunities end-to-end: scoping → deployment → commissioning → closeout, with accountability for outcomes, collaborating with other FDEs assigned to different opportunities within the same account via the DACI model above. - Provide onsite and remote configuration/commissioning of EDGs and resolve installation issues that can't be solved remotely (wiring, hardware, connectivity, firmware). - Direct and coordinate electricians, certified installers, and integrators, and align Verdigris with broader building/energy systems (BMS, EPMS, SCADA, etc.). - Drive scoping and documentation: scoping sheets, shop drawings, and the repeatable processes/templates (and external vendors) needed to scale them across the department. - Manage deployment logistics: order fulfillment triggers, shipments, RMAs/returns, and hardware QA/QC issues with manufacturing and supply chain. - Triage and resolve fleet/connectivity issues (e.g., LTE/uptime degradation, sensing/voltage anomalies) and provision/administer customer access. - Stay engaged past the install: hand-hold the customer from delivery through to first value — confirming data is flowing, insights are usable, and the customer is actually getting value out of the system — rather than treating commissioning as the finish line. - Run install post-mortems, feed recurring failure modes back into process and product, and ensure the lessons are actually adopted by other engineers — not just documented. ## C. Mentorship, Product Feedback & Cross-Functional Leverage - Coach and mentor other Solutions Engineers — in discovery technique, field judgment, and customer communication — and routinely give (and act on) constructive feedback within the team. - Create the conditions for a successful team: share context proactively, unblock teammates, and take on the ambiguous or cross-cutting problems that don't fit neatly into one person's scope. - Be the field-facing product authority: know what the platform does natively, where workarounds are needed, and when custom work should become a roadmap item. - Partner with ESS, Sales, and Product to support customers and influence roadmap with real-world insight — communicating problem and solution space clearly enough to drive alignment above the Senior level. - Lead without authority across internal teams and external partners toward aligned technical outcomes, and be someone other teams actively seek out for help. ## D. Visibility & Repeatability Beyond delivering any single account, the Principal FDE is expected to make their work legible and reproducible for the rest of the department — not just get it done. - Maintain clear, up-to-date visibility for ESS, Sales, and leadership into project status, risks, and outcomes — through structured updates and documentation, not information that lives only in your head. - Turn one-off solutions into repeatable playbooks: templates, checklists, and documented processes that let another engineer (or a partner) execute the same pattern without you in the room. - Flag explicitly which parts of your work are still bespoke versus which are ready to be standardized department-wide, and drive the latter toward becoming the default way the team operates. ### Role across the customer journey - Discovery — Understand the environment, pain points, and goals; build early trust with technical and business stakeholders; respond to RFIs/technical Q&A; feasibility review. - Design & Scoping — Architect the solution; product walkthroughs; system mapping; produce scoping sheets and (where required) shop drawings. - Pilot / Deployment — Stand up the initial solution; direct installers/electricians; configure and commission hardware onsite or remotely; troubleshoot edge cases; get data flowing. - Value Assessment — Translate pilot/field outputs into business impact; produce customer-ready technical reports; build internal and customer-side advocacy for expansion. - Scale & Rollout — Deploy across sites with repeatable processes, integrations, and customizations; ensure long-term account health; codify what should become a department-wide standard. ### Measurable Outcomes - Performance in this role is tracked against three quantified outcomes, the same standard held across Solutions Engineering — measured at the opportunity level given the DACI-based coverage model above, and rolled up quarterly: | **Metric** | **Definition** | | --- | --- | | Pilot conversion | Share of Signals pilots and proofs of value run within your assigned opportunities that convert to a signed expansion, renewal, or new commercial commitment. Reflects how effectively technical delivery and the resulting business case translate into closed outcomes. | | Account expansion | Growth in ARR/TCV, footprint, or scope tied to opportunities where you're the assigned Driver, directly attributable to the delivery work and technical credibility built during the engagement — not overall account performance outside your assigned opportunities. | | Proof artifacts per quarter | Number of customer-ready technical reports, case studies, or Evidence Registry entries produced. These are the tangible outputs that build the business case for expansion within an account and become reusable assets other FDEs and Solutions Engineers can draw on. | *Specific quarterly targets for each metric are set with your manager as part of onboarding and reviewed each quarter.* ### You'll thrive in this role if you: - Build trust quickly and naturally with a wide range of customer stakeholders — from field technicians to executive sponsors — through dynamic, clear communication, not just technical correctness. - Balance technical depth and systems thinking with consultative empathy and strong communication. - Are energized by building something that doesn't yet exist — and equally willing to be hands-on in an electrical room and own a project to completion. - Know when to build fast vs. build right, and can teach that judgment to others. - Know when to execute personally versus when to direct a partner — and don't default to doing everything yourself. - See ambiguity as opportunity and prototyping as a path to clarity. - Can switch between solutions/discovery work and leading external customer delivery in the field. - Can take ownership and exercise authority with contractors and stakeholders to move projects forward. - Think of delivery as ending at customer value, not at equipment installation. - Are sought out by peers and other teams for your judgment, and enjoy helping others grow into that same level of ownership. - Stay organized across two teams and two competing workloads, and escalate clearly when both spike. - Are genuinely curious about applying AI agents to your own workflow, not just aware that they exist. - Collaborate naturally with peers sharing an account rather than treating overlapping coverage as a turf question. ### What you bring: - 7+ years in solutions engineering, systems integration, forward-deployed/field engineering, technical project management, implementations, or equivalent technical consulting, with demonstrated growth into a principal-level, high-autonomy scope. - A track record of owning the most complex projects in a portfolio and navigating high-stakes customer environments and stakeholder groups. - A dynamic, communicative presence in front of customers — comfortable building trust and rapport with a wide range of stakeholders, from field technicians to executive sponsors. This matters as much as technical depth; neither substitutes for the other. - Strong capability with APIs, data infrastructure, scripting, and lightweight software tools. - Data center electrical fluency — hands-on comfort with UPS systems, rectifiers, and critical-power environments — as a core requirement, alongside broader hardware deployment, commissioning, and field troubleshooting experience. - Experience directing or overseeing third-party contractors, systems integrators, or installers. - Experience mentoring or coaching other engineers, and routinely giving and acting on feedback. - High emotional intelligence and consultative instincts — building relationships, not just solving problems. - Working fluency with AI agents and tools applied to real delivery work — e.g., using them for account prep, executive narrative-writing, or other force-multiplying tasks — hands-on experience, not just familiarity with the concept. - Bonus: experience handing prototypes to product teams and participating in productization cycles.