Forward Deployed Engineer
Role summary
Join a well-funded early-stage technology company building intelligent software infrastructure for physical security, autonomous systems, and edge deployments.
As a Forward Deployed Engineer, you'll work directly with customers at industrial, critical infrastructure, and defense-related sites, taking responsibility for deployments from initial installation through successful production operation.
The role requires someone who can debug across the entire technical stack. One issue may involve networking, another a hardware driver, another model behavior, configuration, cameras, sensors, or edge infrastructure. You need to be comfortable finding the real problem rather than waiting for another team to solve it.
Strong customer skills are just as important as technical depth. You'll often be the person on-site when a pilot is not behaving as expected, so you'll need to manage both the technical issue and customer confidence.
Important
• Full-time on-site role in Zürich, Switzerland
• Relocation to Zürich is expected
• Approximately 50% travel across Switzerland and Europe
• Customer-facing technical deployment experience required
• On-premise or edge infrastructure experience required
• NVIDIA DGX, Jetson, or comparable edge hardware experience highly relevant
• Hardware / software integration experience required
• Experience with cameras, sensors, VMS, robotics, or similar systems strongly preferred
• Strong end-to-end troubleshooting ability required
• Defense, government, or critical infrastructure experience is highly desirable
• German language skills are a strong positive
• Early-stage startup experience is highly valued
• Purely internal engineering profiles without customer deployment experience are not suitable
• Candidates must meet nationality requirements associated with defense-sector customer access
• Candidates unwilling to travel extensively are not suitable
Job description
You'll work directly with customers at industrial, critical infrastructure, and defense-related sites, deploying on-premise and edge infrastructure, integrating hardware and software systems, troubleshooting across the full stack, and ensuring pilots successfully move into production.
This is a highly hands-on customer-facing engineering role combining field deployment, infrastructure, systems integration, debugging, and stakeholder management.
Responsibilities
• Own customer deployments from initial setup through production
• Deploy and manage on-premise and edge infrastructure
• Work hands-on with NVIDIA DGX, Jetson, and similar edge hardware
• Integrate cameras, sensors, VMS platforms, and other physical systems
• Troubleshoot across hardware, networking, drivers, models, and configuration
• Diagnose complex issues directly at customer sites
• Configure and validate production deployments
• Support technical pilots and help convert them into successful production environments
• Work directly with customer engineering and operational teams
• Manage technical communication during implementation challenges
• Coordinate between customers and the core engineering team
• Design practical solutions where no out-of-the-box integration exists
• Improve deployment tooling and processes based on field experience
• Document deployment architecture, configuration, and troubleshooting procedures
• Travel regularly to customer sites across Switzerland and Europe
• Take ownership of critical technical issues through resolution
Required Skills
• Experience deploying or managing on-premise infrastructure or edge hardware
• Experience with NVIDIA DGX, Jetson, or comparable edge-compute platforms
• Strong hardware and software integration experience
• Experience integrating cameras, sensors, VMS systems, robotics, or similar technology
• Customer-facing technical experience
• Experience owning technical deployments end-to-end
• Strong troubleshooting and debugging skills
• Ability to diagnose issues across hardware, networking, software, and configuration
• Strong stakeholder communication skills
• Comfortable working directly at customer sites
• Willingness to travel approximately 50% across Europe
• Willingness to relocate to Zürich
• Citizenship compatible with work involving NATO or NATO-friendly defense customers
Technologies
• NVIDIA DGX
• NVIDIA Jetson
• Edge Computing
• On-Premise Infrastructure
• Linux
• Networking
• Cameras
• Sensors
• VMS
• Video Management Systems
• Robotics
• Computer Vision
• AI Models
• Hardware Integration
• Systems Integration
• Physical Security
Nice To Have
• Forward Deployed Engineering experience
• Field Engineering experience
• Solutions Architecture experience
• Deployment Engineering experience
• Robotics experience
• Computer vision experience
• Physical security technology experience
• Defense technology experience
• Government / B2G experience
• Critical infrastructure experience
• Industrial technology experience
• German language proficiency
• Early-stage startup experience
• Zero-to-one product or deployment experience
• Strong technical university background
• Bachelor's or Master's degree in a technical field
• Experience working directly with military, government, or regulated customers
Soft Skills
• Strong ownership mentality
• High emotional intelligence
• Excellent customer communication
• Calm under pressure
• Strong troubleshooting mindset
• Pragmatic problem-solving
• Comfortable with ambiguity
• High adaptability
• Low ego
• Strong stakeholder management
• Bias toward action
• Independent execution
• Comfortable operating in demanding field environments