Forward Deployed Engineer

About the role

Tagup is a defense technology company founded at MIT that is delivering logistics decision advantage with next‑generation AI. We’re growing rapidly and are looking for change‑makers passionate about delivering innovative technologies to solve the most challenging problems in the world’s highest stakes environments. This is an exciting opportunity to engage in meaningful work that strengthens national security and contributes to the success of U.S. and allied forces. Join us in shaping the future of defense logistics for a safer tomorrow.

Forward Deployed Engineers work inside customer programs rather than at a distance from them. You’ll integrate our platform with government data and systems under real constraints, onboard messy real‑world data, build the workflows a program runs on, and support deployments in customer environments, including on‑site when a program needs it. The work reaches users quickly. What you ship often gets into the hands of the people making readiness decisions within weeks, and what you learn in the field feeds back into the product.

What Success Looks Like In Year One: Customer decisions that used to run on spreadsheets and tribal knowledge are running on data you helped instrument; the product team is shipping features that came directly from patterns you spotted on the ground; manual reporting that used to eat days of analyst time is automated and trusted; when senior leadership at a customer command wants to know how their logistics operation is really performing, the answer comes from a system you helped build.

Responsibilities

• Integrate our platform with government data and systems under real constraints, and onboard the imperfect data programs actually run on
• Configure the product against program requirements and support releases, including in government cloud environments
• Build custom workflows that drive adoption, usage, and engagement with key customers
• Triage and resolve customer-reported issues in their environments rather than passing them along
• Own a component or program workstream end to end, returning working systems from a requirements document rather than closed tickets
• Spend time on-site with customers, become their technical counterpart, and bring what you learn back to the product team
• Write, test, and review code to a standard the rest of the team can build on

Skills

• 2+ years of professional software engineering experience, or equivalent demonstrated ability
• Proficiency in Python and/or TypeScript, with SQL and data‑heavy work: ETL, integration, and wrangling imperfect real‑world data
• Clear communication with technical and non‑technical stakeholders, and comfort working directly with customers
• Bias toward ownership: handed a requirements document, you return a working system
• Willingness to travel to customer sites (military installations across the U.S.)
• U.S. citizenship and eligibility to obtain a U.S. government security clearance

Qualifications

• Military service or experience supporting defense programs. Veterans are strongly encouraged to apply
• Familiarity with service supply, maintenance, and readiness data systems
• Experience deploying software in government cloud or other constrained or air‑gapped environments
• An active security clearance

Benefits

• Competitive salary range: $120,000 – $150,000 annually
• Employee Stock Option Plan (part‑ownership for all team members)
• Comprehensive health insurance benefits
• Access to the company’s 401K plan
• Team‑oriented work environment with regular company outings
• Mission‑driven work with tangible impact on national security
• Small team, high leverage – visibility from engineering trenches to executive team