Forward Deployed Software Engineer (m/f/d)

🚀 Become our new Forward Deployed Software Engineer (m/f/d)

As a Forward Deployed Software Engineer, you will work directly with customers to transform complex business problems into robust, production-ready software.

You combine strong software engineering skills with product thinking, customer collaboration, and an ownership-driven delivery mindset. You will build solutions end-to-end, from user interfaces and backend services to enterprise integrations, cloud infrastructure, and AI-enabled functionality.

This is a hands-on engineering role. You will not simply define architectures or hand over concepts. You will actively build, deploy, operate, and improve solutions together with our customers and internal teams.

You do not need to have previously worked under the title “Forward Deployed Engineer” or “AI Engineer.” We also welcome experienced full-stack, backend, platform, and cloud engineers who enjoy solving real customer problems and want to build the next generation of AI-enabled software.

Your Responsibilities

Understand the Domain

• Work directly with customers to understand their business processes, technical environments, users, and operational challenges.

• Structure ambiguous requirements and translate them into clear, implementable technical solutions.

• Challenge assumptions, identify the actual problem behind a request, and help customers prioritize what should be built.

• Understand existing systems, decision logic, data flows, dependencies, and integration constraints.

Build Software End-to-End

• Design and implement production-ready applications across frontend, backend, APIs, integrations, and cloud components.

• Develop modern, user-friendly frontend applications using technologies such as React and TypeScript.

• Build backend services and APIs using technologies such as Python, FastAPI, .NET, or comparable frameworks.

• Connect internal and external systems through reliable APIs, event-driven patterns, and enterprise integrations.

• Build rapid prototypes when requirements are uncertain, then evolve successful concepts into scalable and maintainable products.

• Integrate AI and LLM capabilities where they create meaningful value, such as intelligent assistants, search, document processing, workflow automation, and decision support.

Own Software Engineering Quality

• Write maintainable, testable, secure, and production-ready software.

• Apply strong engineering practices around architecture, code quality, automated testing, documentation, and code reviews.

• Design clear service boundaries, interfaces, data contracts, and error-handling strategies.

• Consider scalability, performance, resilience, observability, security, and cost from the beginning.

• Improve development speed and software quality through automation, reusable components, and AI-assisted engineering workflows.

• Contribute to technical standards, architectural decisions, and engineering best practices across projects.

Deliver in Customer Environments

• Participate in customer workshops, implementation sessions, technical discussions, and delivery phases.

• Collaborate closely with Engineering Managers, AI Engineers, Data Engineers, Cloud Architects, QA Engineers, and customer teams.

• Communicate technical decisions, trade-offs, risks, and progress clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

• Adapt solutions to real enterprise constraints such as existing architecture, security requirements, networking, identity management, and governance.

• Take ownership from the first customer conversation through implementation, deployment, operation, and continuous improvement.

• Support other engineers through code reviews, technical guidance, pairing, and knowledge sharing.

What We’re Looking For

Core Profile

• Several years of professional software engineering experience, ideally building and operating production systems.

• A strong background in full-stack, backend, platform, or cloud engineering.

• Strong ownership mentality. You take responsibility for outcomes, not only assigned development tasks.

• The ability to work effectively in situations where requirements are initially incomplete or ambiguous.

• A pragmatic delivery mindset and the judgment to balance speed, quality, complexity, and business value.

• Comfort working directly with customers and explaining technical topics clearly.

Software Engineering

• Strong proficiency in at least one modern backend language and ecosystem, preferably Python or .NET/C#.

• Experience developing production APIs, backend services, and system integrations.

• Experience with modern frontend development, ideally React and TypeScript, or the ability and willingness to work across the stack.

• Solid understanding of software architecture, clean code, automated testing, maintainability, and common design patterns.

• Experience handling production concerns such as authentication, error handling, retries, timeouts, logging, and monitoring.

• Solid experience with Git and CI/CD platforms such as GitHub, Azure DevOps, or GitLab.

• Experience with asynchronous processing, event-driven systems, distributed systems, or integration-heavy applications is a plus.

Cloud, DevOps and Operations

• Experience developing and deploying applications in a major cloud environment, preferably Microsoft Azure.

• Familiarity with containers, CI/CD, infrastructure as code, secrets management, monitoring, and logging.

• Understanding of production concerns such as identity and access management, networking, security, scalability, and cost control.

• Experience with technologies such as Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform, Azure Container Apps, App Service, Functions, or comparable services is a plus.

• Experience with Databricks or enterprise data platforms is a plus.

AI-Enabled Software Development

• An AI-first mindset and an interest in using AI to improve products, customer processes, and software delivery.

• Hands-on experience integrating LLMs, AI services, conversational interfaces, intelligent search, or generative features is beneficial, but deep machine-learning expertise is not required.

• An understanding of practical AI application patterns such as structured outputs, tool calling, retrieval-augmented generation, validation, fallbacks, and guardrails is a plus.

• Good judgment about when AI provides meaningful value, and when a conventional software solution is more appropriate.

• Willingness to continuously learn as software engineering and applied AI increasingly converge.

This Role Could Be Right for You If…

• You currently describe yourself as a Full-Stack Engineer, Backend Engineer, Platform Engineer, Cloud Engineer, Solution Engineer, or Software Architect.

• You enjoy building complete solutions rather than working on one isolated technical component.

• You like understanding the business context behind the software you build.

• You are comfortable speaking with customers, asking questions, and challenging unclear requirements.

• You want to work with AI-enabled products without necessarily becoming a machine-learning specialist.

• You want ownership of the complete journey from problem discovery to production.

Why Join Us?

• Real customer impact: Build solutions that are used in real enterprise environments and address meaningful business problems.

• End-to-end ownership: Participate in the complete delivery lifecycle, from discovery and architecture to implementation and production.

• Modern engineering and AI: Work at the intersection of software engineering, cloud platforms, data, and applied AI.

• Strong technical collaboration: Work alongside experienced software, AI, data, cloud, and product professionals.

• Continuous growth: Develop your skills through challenging projects, certifications, training, and direct exposure to modern enterprise environments.

• Engineering culture: Join a team that values pragmatic execution, technical quality, curiosity, collaboration, and measurable results.

• Flexible working model: Work within a modern hybrid environment across our Cologne, Munich, and Lisbon locations.

About KI performance

At KI performance, we help organizations use data, software, and artificial intelligence to solve complex business challenges and prepare for an AI-driven future.

Our work ranges from enterprise data platforms and cloud architectures to AI-enabled applications, intelligent workflows, and production-grade GenAI solutions. We work closely with leading enterprises and technology partners to build solutions that are technically robust, operationally sustainable, and connected to measurable business value.

Our culture is shaped by curious, hands-on people who enjoy taking ownership, learning quickly, and building meaningful solutions together.