Senior Forward Deployed Engineer

Axion•New York, NY

12d•$220,000 - $270,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Axion is seeking to build its first Forward Deployed Engineering team to transform customer opportunities into usable software. This is a hands-on software engineering role where you will be responsible for understanding customer problems, deciding what to build, and taking solutions from idea to reliable deployment. You will write and review code, work with data, design integrations and applications, and own the software's behavior post-release. A significant part of the role involves customer interaction, including asking questions, observing workflows, explaining tradeoffs, and testing solutions. You will report to the Head of Strategic Accounts, work with Solutions Directors, and have a dotted-line relationship with Engineering. The role requires a blend of customer engagement and hands-on development. Candidates may have prior FDE or customer-facing software engineering experience with full ownership, or be strong software engineers with a desire for more customer exposure, particularly those with manufacturing or industrial workflow experience. The company values demonstrated building and ownership over specific titles.

Requirements

Strong software engineering fundamentals.
Track record of personally shipping and maintaining production software.
Ability to work independently across backend/application logic, data models, APIs, testing, and debugging.
Comfort reasoning about reliability, permissions, failure cases, and tradeoffs between speed and maintainability.
Python and SQL experience.
Full-stack application development experience with TypeScript/React or comparable tools.
Experience with enterprise data and API integrations.
Experience with applied AI or agent workflows with rigorous evaluation.
Experience in manufacturing, quality, reliability, supply-chain, or service operations is useful but not strictly required.
Strong engineering judgment and demonstrated delivery capabilities.
Enjoy understanding how people work and translating ambiguous problems into useful solutions.
Clear communication with technical and nontechnical colleagues.
Ability to take responsibility for outcomes.
Comfort pushing back constructively when a request is not the right thing to build.
Ability to operate in a small team without waiting for a fully specified backlog.

Responsibilities

Understand and scope customer use cases by working directly with business and technical teams.
Translate broad requests into focused scopes, clear acceptance criteria, and practical delivery plans.
Determine when existing capabilities are sufficient, when new software is needed, and when requests should be narrowed or declined.
Design and implement data integrations, business logic, APIs, applications, and AI-enabled workflows.
Deliver usable software iteratively with tests, clear interfaces, appropriate access controls, and a deployment approach agreed upon with Engineering.
Utilize AI where beneficial and deterministic software where correctness and repeatability are critical.
Reconcile outputs against source data and agreed business rules.
Evaluate model behavior when AI is part of the solution.
Work with users to validate accuracy, usability, and business value.
Monitor deployments, resolve issues, document system functionality, and establish ongoing support models.
Partner with account teams to connect technical delivery to customer adoption and new use cases.
Identify reusable patterns for Product and Engineering to avoid creating unique solutions for every customer.
Help establish engineering practices, delivery standards, and working relationships for the FDE team.