About this role
Engineers who thrive in ambiguous environments and enjoy building direct bridges between customers and core technology will find an ideal home at Buzz Solutions. As the inaugural Forward Deployed Engineer, this person serves as a hands-on technical partner embedded with utility clients and the go-to-market team. Roughly 80% of the time involves customer-facing work, spanning pre-sales technical scoping, pilot execution, and end-to-end deployment of the PowerAI visual intelligence platform. The remaining 20% focuses on building reusable deployment tooling and AI workflows to accelerate delivery and inform core product development.
Operating directly with the CTO and cross-functional teams, this role exists to clear technical objections, connect utility data systems, and lay the operational foundation for a growing deployment function. Success requires enterprise credibility, fluent API integration skills, and the ability to turn complex operational constraints into repeatable technical solutions without a rigid spec sheet.
What you will do
- Partner alongside Sales on discovery calls to understand utility workflows, evaluate data realities, and scope technical implementations prior to contract signing.
- Execute proofs of value and pilots using customer imagery and assets to clear technical, architectural, and security objections.
- Own end-to-end deployments by configuring PowerAI and building integrations into existing customer systems such as GIS, asset management, and reporting pipelines.
- Utilize AI workflows and agentic systems to compress delivery timelines and transform bespoke engineering into repeatable implementations.
- Identify recurring field challenges and translate them into clear, reproducible product requirements for core engineering.
- Build and ship reusable deployment tooling and internal AI agents to drive adoption and efficiency across go-to-market workflows.
What you need
- Bring six or more years of hands-on experience in solutions engineering, forward deployed engineering, implementation, or professional services at a technical product company.
- Demonstrate pre-sales expertise by partnering with account executives through technical discovery and pre-signature scoping.
- Possess strong coding proficiency in Python or TypeScript with genuine fluency in integrating third-party systems via APIs, webhooks, and data pipelines.
- Have hands-on experience building, prompting, evaluating, and deploying agentic systems and LLMs for real users.
- Maintain enterprise credibility to successfully navigate security reviews, architecture scrutiny, and conversations with skeptical engineers.
- Display a high comfort level with ambiguity, excellent communication skills across diverse audiences, and a willingness to travel approximately 40% of the time.
Nice to have
- Experience in utilities, energy, or another regulated industry with long enterprise sales cycles
- Familiarity with computer vision, geospatial data, or large-scale imagery pipelines
- Experience as the first or earliest technical hire in forward deployed engineering, customer engineering, or implementation
- Background in RevOps or internal tooling that earned real, sustained adoption
Skills and tech stack
Questions candidates ask
What is the remote and travel policy for this role?
This position is remote within the United States. It involves a willingness to travel roughly 40% of the time for customer sites and team onsites.
What does the division of responsibilities look like on a regular basis?
Roughly 80% of your time is customer-facing, split across pre-sales scoping and deployment. The remaining 20% points inward: building reusable deployment tooling and AI agents and translating field patterns into product and engineering improvements.
Is visa sponsorship available for this position?
This position does not include sponsorship for United States work authorization.
Who does this role report to and collaborate with?
You'll report directly to our CTO and work in tight partnership with Sales, Product, Solutions, and core Engineering. As our first FDE, you'll help define how the function operates and lay the foundation for a broader Forward Deployed Engineering team as we scale.