Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE)

About the role

Catalyst Labs is a specialized talent partner focusing on recruiting top-tier engineers in Software, Data, and AI-driven domains. We collaborate directly with Founders, CTOs, and Heads of AI at startups and enterprises to facilitate conversations that align with technical expertise and long-term growth.

The client is a fast-growing technology company that embeds top engineering talent directly into customer environments to solve high-impact operational and data challenges. They have generated $25M in revenue and raised $6.7M in funding, supporting their growth and expansion.

Overview

This role is centered around partnering directly with customers to solve their most valuable and complex problems. As a Forward Deployed Software Engineer, you will work hand-in-hand with stakeholders to design, build, and maintain high-impact applications that drive real business change.

Your day-to-day work involves understanding mission-critical objectives, transforming enterprise data into operational workflows, and delivering tools that executives and frontline teams rely on to make informed decisions. You’ll move fast, rapidly iterating, building systems from scratch, and enabling organizations to modernize their operations at exceptional speed.

Beyond writing code, you will play a key role in reshaping how entire teams operate by delivering powerful, data-driven solutions that directly influence business outcomes.

Key Responsibilities

• Work closely with customer stakeholders to understand their most critical business objectives and translate them into high-impact technical solutions.
• Architect, develop, and maintain applications that operationalize enterprise data and drive measurable business outcomes.
• Build end-to-end workflows using large structured and unstructured datasets in production environments.
• Rapidly iterate, often building systems from scratch, to help customers transform their operations at exceptional speed.
• Collaborate directly with executives, operators, and cross-functional teams to deploy tools that meaningfully improve business processes.
• Own projects autonomously, taking full responsibility for delivery, implementation, and long-term success.
• Embed with customer teams as needed, providing both technical expertise and on-the-ground support.
• Travel to client sites as required (typically 10 to 33%) to support implementations and ensure successful adoption.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science or a related field.
• 1 to 5 years of experience as a fullstack engineer, data engineer, or FDE.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to break down complex challenges and deliver practical, production-ready solutions.
• Proficiency in Python and/or TypeScript.
• Demonstrated experience building applications that leverage large datasets in real-world production environments.
• Prominent track record of delivering measurable outcomes through code, whether as a software engineer, data scientist, or technical analytics lead.
• Able to work independently and own outcomes end-to-end while also collaborating effectively with technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills to work closely with customers and internal teams.
• Willingness to travel for customer implementations (10 to 33% depending on project).
• Enthusiasm for working hybrid-inperson at one of the company’s office locations and onsite with customers.

Preferred Experience

• Working with Palantir Foundry and/or AIP.
• Experience delivering production ML or LLM-based solutions.
• Experience building production React frontend applications.
• Familiarity with Spark, distributed computing, or large-scale data processing frameworks.