Forward Deployed Engineer

Silkline•Chicago, IL

6d•$150,000 - $225,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Silkline is building the AI operating system for procurement. Hardware manufacturers in aerospace, defense, space, energy, and robotics use Silkline to run RFQs, POs, and supplier communication, connected to the systems they already run on: ERP, PLM, and MES. The company is backed by top venture investors and has grown its customer base 5x. The founding team consists of Isaac Chambers (CEO, 3x founder, ex-Deloitte) and Brent Shulman (CTO, engineering leader, ex-Palantir and Pave).

Requirements

4+ years in one of the two paths: Manufacturing systems implementer (implementing, configuring, and maintaining ERP, PLM, or MES systems) or Forward deployed software engineer (FDE, solutions engineer, or customer-facing engineer who shipped production code and integrations in front of customers).
Strong engineering background, preferred in fields such as Computer Science, Mathematics, Software Engineering, Physics, and Data Science.
Strong coder, especially with shown proficiency with our stack (TypeScript, React, Next.js, GraphQL, Postgres)
A working understanding of APIs: you can read API docs, test endpoints in Postman, and debug auth and payload issues
Comfort owning a customer relationship, from running a meeting with a VP of Supply Chain to managing a go-live that's slipping
Willingness to travel to customer sites as needed

Nice To Haves

Strong SQL. You can write joins, aggregations, and validation queries without looking things up. GraphQL experience, or the ability to pick it up quickly.
Experience with manufacturing procurement processes such as MRP, sourcing, supplier quality, receiving, and 3-way match
Hands-on experience implementing, configuring, or integrating ERP, PLM, or MES systems, or shipping customer-facing integrations as an engineer
Experience building reports or analytics from operational data
Background in aerospace, defense, space, or other regulated manufacturing
Consulting or deployment strategist background (for example, Palantir, Deloitte, Accenture, or an ERP partner firm)

Responsibilities

Own deployments from start to finish. Run kickoff, discovery, data mapping and migration, configuration, and go-live. Manage the timeline and get procurement, engineering, finance, and IT to adopt Silkline.
Connect Silkline to the customer's systems. Map and validate data flows between Silkline and three-letter systems: ERPs (NetSuite, Microsoft D365, SAP, Epicor, etc.), PLMs (Arena, Teamcenter, Duro), and MES (ION, Manufacturo, Boltline). Diagnose sync issues and resolve them.
Work in the data. Write SQL and GraphQL queries to validate migrations, troubleshoot discrepancies, and build the analytics customers use to measure the impact on spend, lead times, and supplier performance.
Design workflows. Configure approval chains, RFQ processes, supplier onboarding, and PO lifecycles to match how each customer operates, and push back when their current process is the problem.
Be the customer's technical partner. Stay the main point of contact after go-live. Track adoption and outcomes, find expansion opportunities, and flag risk early.
Bring what you learn back to product. Turn patterns you see across customers into clear engineering requirements. If you code, ship some of it yourself.
Build the playbook. Our deployment process is still being written, and you'll write it: implementation templates, data mapping guides, onboarding runbooks, and success metrics.