Role Description
Remote:
Must reside in or near San Diego, CA - Will need to go onsite occassionally
Reports to:
Echo
Direct reports:
None. Delta’s provide performance feedback on other engineers and participate in company peer mentorship program.
Travel:
0-10%
The Role
The Senior Forward Deployed Engineer (Sr FDE) serves as the technical lead responsible for the architecture, ontology design, application delivery, operational support, and overall platform health of SCE's PSPS CDP and WiSDM Foundry environments. The Sr FDE partners directly with utility stakeholders, operational users, and engineering teams to deliver and sustain mission-critical operational capabilities supporting wildfire mitigation, Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS) operations, and regulatory reporting requirements.
The Senior FDE independently owns complex implementation efforts from design through production support, mentors junior engineers, and ensures solutions remain scalable, supportable, and aligned to enterprise governance standards.
Key Responsibilities
- Design, implement, and maintain ontology-driven applications within Palantir Foundry supporting PSPS operations and utility decision making
- Develop and enhance Workshop applications, operational dashboards, workflows, and actions used by field operations, customer operations, and executive leadership
- Design and govern enterprise ontology objects, relationships, and business logic supporting multiple operational use cases
- Implement and maintain data pipelines integrating SAP, OMS, GIS, weather, customer, and operational systems
- Support production operations, incident response, troubleshooting, and root cause analysis during critical operational events
- Participate in operational readiness exercises, tabletop events, and production support activities
- Collaborate with stakeholders to translate operational requirements into scalable Foundry solutions
- Develop governance processes supporting ontology lifecycle management, object reuse, and platform scalability
- Support deployment promotion, release management, testing coordination, and environment governance
- Create and maintain technical documentation, operational runbooks, architecture diagrams, and support procedures
- Mentor engineers on ontology design, Workshop development, operational architecture, and Foundry best practices
Preferred Qualifications
- Deep expertise with Palantir Foundry Ontology Manager, Workshop, Actions, Pipeline Builder, and operational application development
- 6+ years of software engineering or systems integration experience
- Experience supporting production operational platforms with strict uptime and response requirements
- Experience with Python, TypeScript, or Java within Foundry development workflows
- Familiarity with utility operations, wildfire mitigation, public safety operations, outage management, asset management, customer operations, or regulatory reporting environments
- Experience designing enterprise ontologies and governing reusable data models across multiple applications
- Experience integrating ERP, GIS, operational, and enterprise systems into Foundry
- Experience supporting utility, energy, infrastructure, emergency management, public safety, or other operational environments
- Experience participating in on-call rotations or supporting mission-critical production systems
- Strong understanding of operational governance, release management, and platform support models
- Ability to own full feature lifecycle: architecture build test deployment
Additional Preferred Experience
- Experience supporting Palantir Foundry implementations exceeding 50+ ontology objects and multiple operational applications
- Experience conducting ontology reviews, governance assessments, and platform architecture evaluations
- Experience working directly with executive stakeholders, operations teams, and enterprise architecture organizations
About PVM & Benefits
At PVM, we mean it when we say we value diversity. As a PVM team member, you will work with people from all different backgrounds that are passionate about the problems we solve for our customers and are focused on delivering value for our clients. Our culture encourages problem solving, leadership, and innovation, and creates an environment that will support your professional and personal growth. Here are a few highlights of the advantages of being a part of the PVM community:
- Opportunities for growth and advancement
- Tuition/Training reimbursement
- Peer bonus program
- Remote and on-site positions available
- Unlimited PTO
- Flexible work schedule
PVM delivers digital services that help government agencies unlock the power of their data for good and maximize the value of their technology investments. We design, develop, and deploy solutions to solve mission-critical problems. PVM is a black- and service-disabled veteran-owned small business and was founded by a retired Naval officer out of frustration with the status quo with one goal in mind: to help his fellow Shipmates solve the problems they were facing every day. Today, we continue to be driven by that same goal and are focused on taking on our clients’ missions as our own to make a difference in the communities we serve. PVM believes in equal opportunity employment. We won't discriminate against any employee or applicant based on race, gender, nationality, age, religion, disability, military status, or sexual orientation. As a company and as individuals, we're committed to providing an inclusive and welcoming environment for our team, our family members, and our clients.
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.
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