Founding Forward Deployed Engineer

Department: Engineering

Location: Los Angeles, San Francisco

Compensation: $215K – $250K • Offers Equity

Employment Type: FullTime

About Skiffra

Skiffra is building the intelligence layer for the physical world. We translate complex, real-world environments into clear, actionable data.

While most AI companies focus on digital industries, we design AI native orchestration systems for the sectors that extract, move, and build ecosystems around us. We turn messy, high stakes operations into intelligent, adaptive workflows that improve decisions in real time.

Our first proving ground is mining and natural resources, but the platform is modular by design and built to scale into any industry where decisions are expensive and the consequences are real.

The Role

As a Forward-Deployed Engineer at Skiffra, you will work directly with customers to turn difficult operational problems into working deployments of our platform. You will spend real time on site with operators, business leaders, and technical teams, learning how their systems and workflows actually function and determining how Skiffra can improve them.

You will own the technical path from discovery through deployment: understanding the problem, designing the solution, integrating customer systems and data, configuring the platform, validating the result with users, and getting it into reliable operation. You will also identify where the platform needs to evolve and translate field evidence into precise requirements that Skiffra’s product and engineering team can act on.

This is a founding-stage role for someone who combines technical depth with business judgment. You should care as much about whether a solution changes an important operating outcome as whether the architecture is sound. Skiffra's platform is rapidly evolving, and your work in the field will help determine how it becomes broadly useful across customers and industries.

This person will be based in Los Angeles or the San Francisco Bay Area, with a preference for Los Angeles and will be required to travel up to 30-50%.

What You’ll Do

• Embed with customer teams to understand their operations, systems, data, constraints, and most consequential problems

• Understand the operational and economic significance of the problem, including the effect on throughput, cost, reliability, risk, or time

• Turn ambiguous customer needs into clear technical problems, solution designs, deployment plans, and measures of success

• Design integrations across customer systems, APIs, databases, identity systems, ERP platforms, historians, and other operational technology

• Configure and deploy the Skiffra platform in customer environments, including data mapping, workflow setup, testing, validation, and production readiness

• Diagnose technical problems across Skiffra, customer systems, data pipelines, infrastructure, permissions, and third-party services

• Work directly with operators and business leaders to ensure the deployed solution reflects how the operation works and improves a meaningful outcome

• Partner closely with product and platform engineers through implementation, then validate that what ships works under real operating conditions

• Identify missing platform capabilities and distinguish customer-specific requests from recurring patterns that should become reusable platform capabilities

• Translate those findings into clear, evidence-based requirements for Skiffra’s product and engineering team

• Document deployment patterns and help build the methods, tools, and playbooks that make future deployments faster and more repeatable

What We’re Looking For

• At least four years of relevant experience in software, data engineering, systems integration, enterprise technology, technology startups, technical consulting, or a similarly demanding client-facing environment

• Experience leading ambiguous customer-facing technical work from discovery through a deployed outcome

• The judgment and communication skills to earn credibility with customer executives, IT teams, frontline operators, and Skiffra’s product and engineering teams

• Strong computer science fundamentals and the ability to reason clearly about systems, data models, APIs, infrastructure, security, and technical tradeoffs

• Experience working with data and integrations using tools such as SQL, Python, APIs, cloud services, or enterprise platforms

• The judgment to connect technical decisions to customer operations and business outcomes, rather than treating the requested feature as the whole problem

• High ownership and comfort working through ambiguity, incomplete information, and unfamiliar operating environments

• An AI-native working style: you use modern AI tools fluently to investigate, analyze, document, and move faster while maintaining judgment and accuracy

• Willingness to travel up to 50% and spend meaningful time at customer sites, including industrial and remote locations

• Ability to work from Los Angeles or San Francisco

Nice to Have

• Experience identifying follow-on customer opportunities from successful deployment outcomes.

• Experience deploying enterprise software directly with customers

• Experience turning recurring customer needs into reusable product capabilities

• Experience with ERP, historian, maintenance, or operational systems such as SAP, PI, or Wonderware

• Experience navigating enterprise security, identity, networking, cloud, or on-premises infrastructure

• Exposure to industrial, mining, manufacturing, energy, logistics, or other heavy-asset operating environments

• French language fluency

How We Work

We value speed, clarity, and technical rigor. We favor simple systems over clever ones, prototypes over over-planning, and ownership over handoffs. You’ll work directly with founders and ship things that matter quickly.

Location & Work Model

This is a hybrid role with regular in-person collaboration in Los Angeles or the San Francisco Bay Area. We are not a remote-only company.

Work Authorization

Candidates must be authorized to work in the United States. We are not able to offer visa sponsorship for this role.

Benefits & Eligibility

This position is eligible for Skiffra’s standard benefits, including health insurance and retirement plans, and may also qualify for participation in the Company’s bonus and incentive programs.

Equal Opportunity

Skiffra is an equal opportunity employer. We value diversity and do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, national origin, disability, veteran status, or any other protected characteristic.