Senior Forward Deployed Engineer

Inriver•Chicago, IL

6h•$165,000 - $185,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Inriver is seeking a Senior Forward Deployed Engineer to join their US-based team. This new role is designed for an individual who can lead technical engagements with strategic and complex customers, designing solutions in ambiguous and high-pressure enterprise environments. The position involves owning technical architecture, delivery strategy, and acting as a senior technical advisor to customer leadership. The role requires designing and building complex integrations, modeling data structures, leading prototyping, and writing production-quality code. Additionally, the engineer will mentor other Forward Deployed Engineers, provide customer feedback to internal teams, and manage escalated production issues. Travel to customer sites is expected.

Requirements

7+ years of experience in software engineering, solutions engineering, or a related technical/customer-facing role, including experience owning complex technical engagements.
Deep coding skills in at least one modern language (e.g., Python, TypeScript, Go, Java, C#), with the judgment to know when to build vs. when to advise.
Extensive experience with REST/GraphQL APIs, webhooks, and enterprise integration patterns (ETL, middleware, iPaaS) at scale.
Track record of leading technical relationships with enterprise customers.
Strong ability to reason about complex data models — attributes, taxonomies, relationships — and how they map to messy, real-world enterprise catalogues.
Experience mentoring or technically leading other engineers, even without formal management responsibility.
A bias toward action balanced with the judgment to architect for scale and maintainability.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills; able to translate fluidly between deep technical detail and executive-level strategy.
Experience with cloud infrastructure (AWS/GCP/Azure) and modern deployment practices at enterprise scale.
High comfort with ambiguity and the ability to bring structure to messy, high-stakes customer environments.

Nice To Haves

Prior experience with a PIM, MDM, DAM, or product data platform.
Deep experience integrating with ERP or PLM systems.
Experience with ecommerce/marketplace syndication at scale.
Familiarity with compliance-heavy product domains.
Prior experience in a senior forward-deployed, solutions architecture, or professional services leadership role at an enterprise SaaS company.
Experience contributing to pre-sales or solutioning for large enterprise deals.

Responsibilities

Own the technical architecture and delivery strategy for large and complex customer engagements, from discovery through go-live and expansion.
Act as the senior technical advisor to customer engineering and IT leadership on how Inriver fits into their broader systems landscape.
Design and build complex, high-leverage integrations and workflows on top of Inriver's platform, connecting it to ERP/PLM systems, DAM, and downstream commerce/syndication channels.
Model elastic, enterprise-scale product data structures for customers with significant catalogue complexity or regulatory requirements.
Lead rapid prototyping efforts to de-risk onboarding, migrations, and pilots for customers with the highest data volume or complexity.
Write production-quality code — platform enhancements, connectors, extensions, internal tools — and scope additional engineering support.
Mentor and technically guide other Forward Deployed Engineers, reviewing their solution designs and unblocking them on hard problems.
Serve as a senior technical voice of the customer internally, shaping product and platform roadmap decisions.
Own escalated production issues, leading real-time debugging efforts alongside customer engineering teams.
Travel to customer sites as needed (expect ~20–40% travel).