Role Description
3Pillar is an AI transformation partner on a mission to help enterprises build the AI-native products and intelligent agents that will define the next era of business. With teams across North America, Europe, Latin America, and Asia, we work with the most ambitious companies in financial services, healthcare, media, and technology — helping them move faster, modernize boldly, and compete on their own terms. Our HelixAI platform and Helix Pods delivery model put our engineers at the center of real agentic transformation — doing work that is open, portable, and built to last. We are building the future of enterprise AI.
Location: Canada (Remote/Hybrid), open to US
Position Overview The Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) is a highly technical, customer-facing engineering role that sits at the intersection of complex software development and strategic client architecture. FDEs work directly with prospective and existing enterprise clients to understand their architectural challenges, rapidly build high-impact proofs-of-concept (PoCs), and embed within client engineering environments to deploy production-grade code. This role balances technical execution with strategic consulting, shifting from early-stage architecture discovery to hands-on software delivery and integration.
Key Responsibilities Technical Discovery & Rapid Prototyping: Partner with sales and solutions teams during early-stage discovery to analyze a client's existing technical stack, data pipelines, and infrastructure. Rapidly construct working prototypes, mock integrations, and core code patterns to demonstrate technical feasibility and value. Hands-on Client Deployment: Embed directly with client engineering teams to transition a proposed architecture into a live production environment. Write robust, clean, and maintainable code to build out core platforms, data pipelines, or automated frameworks. Integration & Systems Engineering: Tackle complex systems integration challenges, working with diverse environments, cloud providers, and emerging automated frameworks to bridge gaps between disparate client architectures. Technical Onboarding & Hand-off: Deliver production-ready codebases with exceptional documentation and architectural guardrails. Partner with internal long-term product delivery teams to ensure a seamless technical hand-off, mentoring core engineers on the specific patterns and environments established during the deployment phase.
Core Qualifications Senior/Staff-Level Engineering Background: Extensive hands-on experience in software engineering, systems architecture, or data engineering, with a proven track record of shipping production-grade systems. Polyglot & Systems Fluency: Mastery of modern backend environments (such as Python), environment configuration management, and complex API/system integration patterns. Cloud Architecture: Deep engineering competence with at least one major cloud ecosystem (AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud). Consultative Problem Solving: Strong communication skills with the ability to sit shoulder-to-shoulder with a client’s engineering leadership, understand ambiguous requirements, and quickly translate them into an execution plan. Execution Speed: Ability to land in an unfamiliar codebase or architecture and confidently begin committing clean code and resolving technical hurdles on day one.
About Forward Deployed Engineering
Forward Deployed Engineers are embedded directly with customers to build custom solutions, integrate products into existing infrastructure, and bridge the gap between product engineering and customer success. The role combines deep technical skills with the ability to operate in client environments and translate business requirements into working software.
Originally pioneered by Palantir, the FDE model has spread across AI, enterprise SaaS, and cloud infrastructure companies. FDEs write production code, architect integrations, train customer teams, and feed product insights back to the core engineering organization. At companies like OpenAI, Salesforce, and Databricks, FDE teams are treated as elite engineering units that can ship custom solutions in days rather than quarters.
Typical FDE stack: Python, TypeScript, SQL, REST/GraphQL APIs, cloud platforms (AWS/GCP/Azure), and increasingly LLM APIs and AI orchestration frameworks. Strong communication and the ability to context-switch between technical and business conversations are as important as coding ability.
Similar Roles
Get the FDE Pulse Brief
Weekly market intelligence for Forward Deployed Engineers. Job trends, salary data, and who's hiring. Free.