Forward Deployed Engineer

As a Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) at KnackLabs.ai, you will sit at the intersection of engineering, product, and customer success. You will work directly with customer teams to understand their workflows and pain points, translate business problems into technical solutions, rapidly prototype and deploy applications, and turn customer learnings into reusable product capabilities.

abilities.

This role is ideal for someone who combines strong software engineering fundamentals with product thinking and customer empathy. You may come from an SDE/software engineering background with product exposure, a technical product management role with strong hands-on engineering experience, or a solutions/implementation background where you have built and shipped technical solutions. into how the solutions you build impact a customer's business.

The candidate will have responsibilities across the following functions:

Customer Embedding:

• Work directly with customers to understand their business processes, workflows, pain points, and technical environments.
• Translate customer needs into clear technical and product requirements.
• Build strong relationships with technical and business stakeholders.

Solution Building:

• Design, build, and deploy custom integrations, workflows, and applications on top of the KnackLabs.ai platform.
• Work across backend, APIs, databases, cloud infrastructure, and frontend integrations as required.
• Build production-quality solutions while balancing speed, scalability, and maintainability.

Product Thinking and Ownership:

• Identify recurring customer problems and opportunities for product improvement.
• Translate customer feedback into product requirements and actionable engineering work.
• Partner closely with product and engineering teams to turn one-off customer solutions into reusable, scalable product capabilities.
• Contribute to product decisions based on real customer usage and feedback.

Rapid Prototyping:

• Quickly prototype and validate solutions in ambiguous and fast-moving environments.
• Move from problem discovery → solution design → prototype → production deployment.
• Be comfortable shipping a practical solution today while continuously improving it over time.

Technical Troubleshooting:

• Debug issues across the stack, including APIs, integrations, databases, data pipelines, and frontend systems.
• Diagnose and resolve issues in live customer environments.
• Work closely with engineering teams when deeper product or platform changes are required.

Ongoing Ownership:

• Own the technical relationship with select customers post-deployment.
• Monitor solution performance and reliability.
• Continuously improve solutions as customer requirements evolve and scale.

Travel:

• Travel to customer sites as needed.
• Travel will be occasional and may vary depending on the customer/account.

Requirements:

• 4+ years of experience across software engineering, product engineering, technical product management, solutions engineering, implementation, or a combination of these.
• Strong software engineering fundamentals with proficiency in at least one backend language such as Python, Node.js, Go, or similar.
• Comfort working across the stack and understanding how different technical components come together.
• Experience with REST/GraphQL APIs, databases (SQL/NoSQL), and cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure).
• Ability to understand business problems and translate them into practical technical solutions.
• Strong product thinking and ability to prioritise based on customer/business impact.
• Ability to work independently in ambiguous, fast-changing environments.
• Strong communication skills, with the ability to explain technical concepts and trade-offs to both engineers and non-technical stakeholders.
• A strong bias toward action and ownership.

Who Will Thrive in This Role:

This role is particularly well suited for candidates who combine engineering depth with product or customer-facing experience.

You could be:

• An SDE / Software Engineer who has worked closely with product teams and has experience contributing to product decisions or owning customer problems.
• A Product Engineer who enjoys understanding customer problems and building end-to-end solutions.
• A Technical Product Manager / Product Manager with a strong engineering background and hands-on understanding of software development.
• A Solutions Engineer / Implementation Engineer who enjoys building and deploying technical solutions for customers.
• An engineer who has transitioned into Product Management and wants to return to a more hands-on technical role.
• A technically strong PM who can comfortably work with APIs, databases, cloud systems, and engineering teams.
• Someone who enjoys moving between customer conversation → product thinking → technical solution → working code.

Good to Have:

• Prior experience as a Forward Deployed Engineer, Solutions Engineer, Product Engineer, Technical Product Manager, or in consulting/implementation.
• Experience working with AI/ML products, LLM-based applications, or data-intensive systems.
• Familiarity with enterprise environments, integration patterns, security, and compliance considerations.
• Experience working directly with customers or external stakeholders.
• Startup experience or comfort working in an early-stage, fast-changing environment.
• Experience taking customer-specific solutions and turning them into scalable product capabilities.

What We Value:

• Customer Empathy: You enjoy understanding the "why" behind a customer's problem, not just the technical requirement.
• Engineering Ownership: You are comfortable getting into the code, debugging issues, and shipping working solutions.
• Product Thinking: You can distinguish between a one-off customer request and a problem that deserves a reusable product solution.
• Bias Toward Action: You prefer building and validating something today over spending weeks trying to design the perfect solution upfront.
• Communication: You can comfortably move between customer conversations, product discussions, and technical implementation.