Forward Deployed Data Engineer - Houston

Indicium AI•Houston, TX

2d•Onsite

About The Position

As a Forward Deployed Data Engineer (FDE) on our US Launch Team, you will act as the principal technical anchor embedded directly within high-stakes enterprise client accounts, focusing heavily on Financial Services and Healthcare. You will be on the front lines in client environments, bridging the gap between C-suite data strategy and hands-on production code. Working alongside partners at Databricks and Anthropic, you will lead architecture design, modernize legacy ecosystems into cloud-native Lakehouses, build agentic AI data harnesses, and guide integrated "SWAT" pods to ship working software rapidly.

Requirements

Deep proficiency in Python and advanced SQL with a proven track record of shipping production data software.
Hands-on experience building, scaling, and tuning Databricks Lakehouse environments (Delta Lake, Unity Catalog, PySpark, DLT, Workflows).
Expert-level experience with dbt (Core or Enterprise) for data modeling, Terraform for Infrastructure as Code, and Git/Airflow for orchestration and CI/CD.
Demonstrated background migrating enterprise client workloads from legacy platforms (Teradata, Netezza, Informatica, Oracle) to modern cloud infrastructure.
Equal comfort pitching target architectures to a client CTO and debugging a failing PySpark job or dbt macro alongside junior engineers.
Ability to translate messy business requirements into clean architectural patterns and speak authoritatively across both technical and business functions.
High autonomy and resilience—thriving in a fast-paced, Series A growth environment without relying on rigid corporate playbooks or large support structures.

Nice To Haves

Prior experience in forward-deployed, technical consulting, or ProServe roles at top-tier agencies or hyper-growth vendors.
Pragmatic experience building or deploying LLM/GenAI orchestration frameworks (LangChain, LlamaIndex, Anthropic API) into production pipelines.
Official certifications in Databricks, AWS, GCP, or dbt.

Responsibilities

Serve as the primary technical authority on client engagements, partnering directly with client VP/CTO stakeholders to scope architectures, map data domains, and turn complex requirements into execution-ready engineering plans.
Write and optimize production PySpark, Databricks SQL, and Delta Live Tables (DLT), refactoring complex legacy logic (Informatica, PL/SQL, legacy stored procedures) into Medallion Architectures.
Architect deterministic, secure data "harnesses" that integrate LLM workflows (Anthropic/Claude) into traditional enterprise data pipelines safely and cost-effectively.
Write modular Terraform scripts to provision cloud environments (AWS/GCP), manage governance and lineage via Unity Catalog, and enforce CI/CD rigor across projects.
Partner with nearshore engineering squads as the US technical lead, conducting code reviews, debugging performance bottlenecks, and maintaining high engineering standards.
Act as the ultimate technical safety net, jumping into code to fix issues and keep client delivery on track during critical incidents.