Redpanda Data
AI infrastructure
ForwardDeployedEngineer
Neural analysis suggests this role is
optimal for Mid+ candidates.
“Forward Deployed Engineer at Redpanda Data. Skills: Forward Deployed Engineering, Agentic Data Plane (ADP), AI infrastructure, data streaming, agent development, integration development, data pipeline development. Build at the customer site. Write production-quality agents, integrations, and data pipelines on Redpanda ADP, inside the customer’s environment and codebase”
Industry & Context.
Work in unfamiliar territory, fast; Ramp quickly, orient to what exists, build on top of it without breaking it; Own the technical deliverable; design the technical approach; Make sure the work integrates correctly with what they already have and what they’ll maintain after you leave; Identify patterns across engagements
Build at the customer site, embedded on-site, working inside the customer’s environment, Travel: 30–50% during active lighter between engagements, You’ll be on-site when the build is live
What They're Looking For.
Must Have
production software, backend systems, data pipelines, APIs, agent systems, agents, LLM APIs, integrations between complex systems, operate in any environment, read unfamiliar code, understand what it does, extend it without breaking it, customer-facing communication, work directly with a customer’s engineering team, credible, trusted technical partner, Shipped at a customer site or in a deployment context, been in the room when something hard went live, know the difference between a demo and a production deployment
Nice to Have
Experience in a forward-deployed or customer-embedded engineering model — Anthropic FDE, OpenAI Deployed Engineer, Stripe FDE, Sierra, Palantir FDSE, or analogous, Background in streaming or real-time data systems (Kafka, Flink, Redpanda, or similar), Experience in regulated industries (financial services, healthcare, public sector) or air-gapped environments, been the first or only technical person in a customer engagement — run it end-to-end without a playbook
What You'll Do.
Build at the customer site
Write production-quality agents
and data pipelines on Redpanda ADP
inside the customer’s environment and codebase
Work in unfamiliar territory
orient to what exists
build on top of it without breaking it
Own the technical deliverable
Understand what the engagement is supposed to produce
design the technical approach
hand it off clean — documented
and running in production
Be the Redpanda technical voice with the customer’s engineers
Work alongside their team daily
Make sure the work integrates correctly with what they already have and what they’ll maintain after you leave
Drive toward exit from day one
Build with handoff in mind
Write documentation that their team can actually use
Train them on what you built
Don’t create dependencies on you
Identify patterns across engagements — what customers keep needing to build
where ADP makes things hard
what should be productized
Bring that back to Product and Engineering clearly
How You'll Work.
Team & Collaboration
Work alongside their team daily; Work directly with a customer’s engineering team — their leads, their architects, their individual contributors
Communication Scope
Customer-facing communication; Be the Redpanda technical voice with the customer’s engineers; Earn their trust; Make sure the work integrates correctly with what they already have and what they’ll maintain after you leave; Write documentation that their team can actually use; Train them on what you built; Feed learnings back; Bring that back to Product and Engineering clearly
Process & Methodology
Own the technical deliverable, design the technical approach, Drive toward exit from day one, Build with handoff in mind
Full Job Description
Redpanda is pioneering the Agentic Data Plane (ADP) - a new category in AI infrastructure that makes it simple and secure to connect AI agents with enterprise data and systems. Built on a multi-modal data streaming engine, Redpanda empowers agentic applications that reason and act in real-time with speed, autonomy, and precision. Global leaders including Activision Blizzard, Cisco, Moody's, Texas Instruments, Vodafone and 2 of the top 5 banks in the U. S. rely on Redpanda to process hundreds of terabytes of data a day. Backed by premier venture investors Lightspeed, GV and Haystack VC, Redpanda is a diverse, people-first organization with teams distributed around the globe. About the Role: Redpanda is building the Agentic Data Plane (ADP) — the streaming and data infrastructure the world’s largest enterprises run mission-critical agents on. The enterprises winning right now are building agents that encode their own business logic, their own data, their own institutional knowledge into production-grade infrastructure. That’s digital sovereignty, and Redpanda ADP is the infrastructure layer that makes it real. Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) is the delivery arm. We embed engineers directly with strategic customers and build the agents and integrations that turn ADP into owned outcomes. As a Forward Deployed Engineer, you are the builder: embedded on-site, working inside the customer’s environment, writing the code that ships. This is not a solutions engineering role. You are not here to demo or advise. You are here to build — agents, integrations, data pipelines, and the infrastructure that runs them — alongside a customer team, in their environment, on their timeline. You Will: Build at the customer site. Write production-quality agents, integrations, and data pipelines on Redpanda ADP, inside the customer’s environment and codebase. What you ship has to work after you leave. Work in unfamiliar territory, fast. Every customer engagement is a new codebase, a new da
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