[Hiring] Forward Deployed Engineer @Rethink recruit

Role Description

Vannevar’s Mission teams operate like small startups within the company. As a Forward Deployed Engineer, you will serve as the technical owner for a mission and its associated customer engagements — working directly with operators, analysts, and technical stakeholders supporting national security missions.

You will own the architecture, development, deployment, and fielding of software solutions tailored to real-world operational needs. You will act as a senior technical counterpart to customer stakeholders, translating mission requirements into scalable software, navigating government technical environments, and ensuring capabilities are delivered reliably into production. This is a hands-on individual contributor role with genuine technical ownership.

What You’ll Do

• Architect, build, and own software solutions deployed directly to customer environments in support of mission-critical use cases
• Serve as the primary technical point of contact for customer stakeholders, engaging with senior technical leaders to understand mission needs and represent Vannevar’s technical approach
• Own end-to-end technical delivery for your mission workstreams, from requirements gathering and system design through implementation, deployment, and sustainment
• Contribute hands-on code to improve product capabilities, performance, and scalability across customer use cases
• Build software that enables users to unlock value from large-scale data holdings including text, multimedia, and geospatial datasets spanning over 46 languages
• Collaborate with engineers, product designers, and mission domain experts to plan and deliver complex software features
• Support government-facing technical artifacts as needed, including input to RFIs, RFPs, Statements of Work, and white papers
• Navigate and integrate with government IT ecosystems, ensuring solutions meet security, compliance, and operational constraints
• Travel 20-30% to engage directly with mission owners and deliver capabilities in the field

Qualifications

• 5+ years as a full-stack developer including familiarity with relational databases (Postgres), caching technologies (Redis), object storage systems (S3), and modern front-end frameworks (React)
• Experience developing and deploying software compliant with DoD Risk Management Framework (RMF)
• Experience interfacing with government-owned IT systems including data platforms, IdAM providers, SIEM, and CDSs
• Experience working with government IT and program offices to scope technical requirements, architecture, and integrations
• Experience working with end users to scope mission requirements, conduct user testing, and gather product feedback
• Active U.S. Top Secret security clearance with SCI eligibility

Benefits

• Competitive salary
• Health, dental, and vision insurance
• Unlimited PTO plus shared downtime during federal holidays and company-wide time off at year end
• 401(k) match
• Lifestyle and wellbeing stipends
• Fully paid parental leave
• Child and pet care reimbursement during travel
• Salary top-up during military reserve duty
• WeWork access