Sr Forward Deployment Engineer

Sr Forward Deployment Engineer

About the Role

We're looking for a Senior Forward Deployed Engineer to lead high-stakes SingleStore implementations and mentor a small team of FDEs. You'll be the most senior technical voice on your engagements — embedding with customers to architect and build real-time data systems, lead migrations onto SingleStore, and tune performance at scale — while also shaping how the broader FDE team executes, ramps, and delivers. This is a hybrid technical/leadership role: still hands-on-keyboard on the hardest problems, but with real ownership over team quality and output.

What You'll Do

Customer Delivery

• Own the technical relationship for our most complex or highest-value customer engagements, from kickoff through production go-live
• Architect SingleStore-implementations that address customer business needs incorporating real-time analytics, HTAP workloads, and high-throughput ingestion pipelines, and write production-grade code (SQL, Python, and/or Java/Scala) alongside customer engineers
• Lead migrations to SingleStore from legacy or incumbent databases (e.g., Oracle, SQL Server, Vertica, Redshift, Snowflake), including schema conversion, data validation, cutover planning, and minimizing downtime/risk
• Design schemas, indexing strategies, and sharding/partitioning approaches tailored to demanding, large-scale workloads
• Own deep query tuning and performance optimization — analyzing query plans, resolving bottlenecks in memory/compute sizing, replication, and workload management, and coaching customers on tuning best practices
• Evaluate and apply AI/LLM-based tools where they accelerate delivery — e.g., AI-assisted code generation, query optimization copilots, or natural-language-to-SQL interfaces — and advise customers on integrating SingleStore into their own AI/RAG and vector search use cases
• Serve as the escalation point for the toughest performance, scaling, and architecture problems across the team's engagements
• Act as executive-level technical counsel for customer stakeholders when engagements require it

Team Leadership

• Provide technical oversight and mentorship to a small team of FDEs (typically 3–6), reviewing architecture decisions, code, migration plans, and query tuning approaches across their engagements
• Help staff and scope new engagements — assessing complexity, matching FDEs to customers, and flagging risk early
• Run technical reviews and retros to raise the bar on delivery quality and consistency across the team
• Coach FDEs on both technical depth (migrations, tuning, AI tooling) and customer-facing skills; support onboarding and ramp-up for new hires
• Partner with leadership on team processes, hiring, and capacity planning, without becoming a full-time people manager — you're still expected to be deep in customer work

Cross-Functional Impact

• Build reusable tools, accelerators, and reference architectures — including migration playbooks, tuning guides, and AI-assisted workflows — that reduce time-to-value across the team's implementations
• Be the primary feedback channel from the field into Product and Engineering — surfacing patterns across multiple engagements, not just one-off issues
• Represent the FDE function in internal planning around roadmap, tooling, and delivery methodology
• Liaison with the customer success teams to ensure appropriate handover post customer go-live

What We're Looking For

• 7+ years of experience as a software/data engineer, solutions architect, or similar hands-on technical role, with significant time in a customer-facing or consulting capacity
• 2+ years of experience informally or formally leading, mentoring, or setting technical direction for other engineers
• Deep SQL skills and hands-on experience with distributed or MPP databases (SingleStore, Snowflake, Vertica, ClickHouse, Redshift, BigQuery, etc.)
• Hands-on experience leading database migrations — schema/data conversion, validation, and cutover — into a cloud or distributed database
• Strong track record of query tuning and performance troubleshooting on large-scale, high-concurrency systems
• Working familiarity with AI/LLM tooling — either using AI coding assistants in daily engineering work, or building/integrating AI-powered features (RAG, vector search, copilots) for customers
• Strong proficiency in Python, Java, or Scala for building data pipelines and integrations
• Solid understanding of data streaming and CDC technologies (Kafka, Debezium, Kinesis, Flink, Spark Streaming)
• Familiarity with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and containerized/orchestrated deployments (Docker, Kubernetes)
• Track record of leading technically ambiguous, high-stakes customer engagements to successful outcomes
• Excellent communication skills; ability to operate credibly with both engineers and senior business/technical stakeholders
• Willingness to travel to customer sites as needed (typically 20–40%, varies by engagement)

Nice to Have

• Direct experience with SingleStore (or hands-on evaluation/POC experience)
• Experience with SingleStore's vector/AI capabilities or building production RAG pipelines
• Background in real-time analytics, adtech, fintech, gaming, or other low-latency data domains
• Deep experience with database internals (storage engines, columnstore/rowstore tradeoffs, execution plans, optimizer behavior)
• Prior experience as a Senior/Staff FDE, Principal Solutions Architect, or in a technical team-lead role at a data infrastructure or consulting company

Why This Role

You'll lead the hardest real-time data problems in the field — migrations, deep performance tuning, and applied AI — while helping build the team around you. High ownership over both customer outcomes and the people delivering them, with a direct line to shaping product and delivery strategy.