Forward Deployment Engineer

Walt is an early-stage, agentic data engineering and analytics platform. Our customers don't just "install software", they reshape how data is modelled, queried, and reasoned about. Forward Deployment Engineers (FDEs) sit at the centre of that transformation.

We're a small team with deep experience in large-scale data systems, real customers, and real problems. We value high ownership, intellectual honesty, directness, and zero politics , people who care deeply about building something great.

Why This Role Exists

Forward Deployment Engineers are Walt's strategic weapon for enterprise success.

This role blends solutions architecture, product thinking, and hands-on engineering. You work directly with customers to scope problems, build real solutions, and take them all the way to production. One hour you might be debugging SQL; the next you're whiteboarding data architecture with a VP; later you're feeding insights back into the product roadmap.

If you like owning outcomes end-to-end and operating close to real customer problems, this role is for you.

What You'll Do

Own customer deployments, end-to-end

• Frame ambiguous problems and turn them into concrete technical plans
• Lead PoCs → production rollouts → monitoring and iteration
• Be accountable for outcomes, not just deliverables

Translate business goals into technical reality

• Work with customer stakeholders to understand analytics and data-engineering needs
• Convert loosely defined goals into clear schemas, metrics, and guardrails

Build and optimize customer-specific implementations

• Design semantic models and data mappings across diverse schemas
• Debug and optimize SQL, APIs, and pipelines in real production environments
• Ensure accuracy, performance, and maintainability

Partner with sales and product

• Support pre-sales by scoping solutions and demonstrating real value
• Identify recurring patterns, gaps, and edge cases
• Drive product requirements, PRDs, and roadmap inputs grounded in real usage

Enable customers

• Train customer teams on Walt best practices and advanced features
• Help customers become self-sufficient while remaining a trusted technical partner

What We're Looking For

Strong engineering foundation

• 3+ years shipping and operating production software
• Strong Python and SQL; comfortable with APIs and services
• You can debug real systems, not just write demos

Modern data stack experience

• Hands-on with Snowflake, BigQuery, Databricks, or similar
• dbt experience strongly preferred
• Comfortable reasoning about schemas, metrics, lineage, and data quality

Exceptional communication

• Can explain complex technical ideas clearly to both executives and engineers
• Comfortable leading technical conversations with customers

High ambiguity tolerance

• You thrive when requirements are unclear
• You define the path forward instead of waiting for instructions

Customer empathy

• Genuinely curious about customer problems
• You care about whether the solution actually works, not just whether it shipped

What Makes This Role Different

• You're not a support engineer or a post-sales afterthought
• You help shape the product, not just deploy it
• You operate at the intersection of engineering, product, and customer impact
• Your work directly influences revenue, retention, and roadmap decisions

Why Walt

• Early-stage company with real customers and real problems
• Founding team with deep experience in large-scale data systems
• Small team, high ownership, and zero politics
• We value intellectual honesty, directness, and people who care deeply about building something great

Interview Process

• Round 1-Resume Deep Dive + System Design (India team)
• Round 2- Technical Deep Dive (India+US Team)
• Round 3- Final Founder Round