Forward Deployed Engineer

Onebrief

12d • $180,000 - $255,000

About The Position

Onebrief’s Forward Deployed Engineers bridge the company’s software capabilities and real-world mission outcomes, working across software engineering, product, customer missions, and deployment. They deploy alongside military operators, command staffs, and partner systems in unclassified and restricted or air-gapped environments through agile field sprints. The role involves writing production-grade code, inspecting REST/gRPC APIs, transforming schemas, debugging distributed systems, and turning repeated field workarounds into reusable product capabilities.

The position combines hands-on engineering with customer engagement. Engineers work directly with operational users to understand mission friction and develop practical software solutions, while partnering with Product and Core Engineering to bring recurring needs into the core platform. They integrate Onebrief Core and Atom Engine with partner command-and-control systems, databases, and military data structures, and provide well-documented technical escalations. They also communicate technical trade-offs and operational impacts to both engineering teams and senior military stakeholders.

Requirements

• At least 3 years of progressive software engineering, solutions engineering, or field software engineering experience involving hands-on development.
• Proficiency in a standard programming language such as Python, C++, C#, TypeScript, or Go, or a similar language.
• Hands-on experience with REST/gRPC APIs, relational databases, data modeling, JSON/XML schemas, microservices, and cloud/edge infrastructure.
• Ability to parse application logs, diagnose network or authentication failures across multiple systems, and isolate root causes.
• Ability to explain technical trade-offs, lead interactive working sessions with users, and handle operational urgency with non-technical stakeholders.
• Active Secret clearance.
• Willingness to travel 25–50% of the time.

Nice To Haves

• Prior experience as a Forward Deployed Engineer or Field Software Engineer at an enterprise software or defense-tech company, such as Palantir, Anduril, C3.ai, or Scale AI.
• Direct experience building, deploying, or debugging software inside air-gapped DoD networks or classified environments.
• Experience with DoD software delivery, C2 systems, combatant command structures (COCOMs), operational planning workflows, or military data systems.
• Active Top Secret clearance with SCI eligibility.
• Hands-on experience using modern AI-assisted development tools to accelerate integrations, scripting, and data transformations.

Responsibilities

• Work directly with operational users during field embeddings to translate mission challenges into technical software solutions.
• Inspect schemas, write integration scripts, call REST APIs, analyze logs, and debug systems in restricted customer environments.
• Identify recurring field workarounds and work with Product and Core Engineering to turn them into generalized, reusable platform capabilities.
• Integrate Onebrief Core and Atom Engine with partner C2 systems, databases, and military data structures in complex network environments.
• Isolate failure domains in the field and provide escalations with reproduction steps, environmental states, logs, and root-cause hypotheses.
• Explain distributed software architecture to engineers and brief senior military leaders or command staff on operational impact.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Education Level: No Education Listed