[Hiring] Forward Deployed Software Engineer @UFORCE

Role Description

We’re looking for a Forward Deployed Engineer to make UFORCE systems work reliably in the field. You’ll work alongside engineers, operators, and customers during trials, demonstrations, training, and deployments, resolving issues and turning field experience into practical improvements.

Software is your primary discipline, but this is not a desk-based software role. It’s a hands-on, deployed position where you’ll work across the wider system, from networking and communications to equipment setup and operator workflows.

You don’t need deep mechanical, marine, or electronics expertise. We’re looking for strong software skills, practical operational experience, and the ability to learn quickly.

The role is a remote-based role, with regular travel to field sites and customer locations locally and internationally.

What You Will Do

• Own technical execution in the field: deploying, configuring, and supporting our systems during trials, demonstrations, training, and customer activity, often with limited backup.
• Manage the software side of deployments, including baselines, versions, configuration control, release notes, validation checks, and rollback and recovery procedures.
• Diagnose faults across the whole deployed system using structured fault isolation, separating software, hardware, network, comms, power, sensor, configuration, operator, and environmental causes.
• Read logs, reproduce issues, test hypotheses, and capture clear evidence, then hand issues back to Engineering with enough context to act on them quickly.
• Write scripts and small tools that automate checks, validate configuration, parse logs, and reduce manual work in the field.
• Prepare for field activity by checking equipment, cabling, compute setup, spares, tools, checklists, and documentation. Support practical tasks beyond software, such as system setup and compute swaps, and improve preparation so deployments become faster and more repeatable.
• Turn field observations into clear feedback for Software, Product, Operations, and Engineering, closing the gap between what is built, what is deployed, and what the customer expects.
• Support operators and customers during demonstrations and training, explain technical issues clearly to both specialist and non-specialist audiences, and help customers become more self-sufficient after handover.
• Improve software readiness over time, including observability, release discipline, documentation, and knowledge transfer, so the field depends less on engineering reach-back.

Qualifications

• Strong software engineering ability as your primary discipline, with skills in Python and/or C++ for debugging, log analysis, and system maintenance.
• You can read, write, and debug code and scripts and are comfortable with version control, APIs, services, and logs.
• Systems-minded judgment. You can explain interfaces, dependencies, and trade-offs across software, compute, networking, comms, sensors, hardware, and field operations, and you avoid assuming that every problem is a software problem.
• Experience deploying and configuring Linux-based software systems, including package management, services, containers, updates, rollbacks, and repeatable deployment methods.
• Practical field troubleshooting experience in deployed or operational settings, such as military or global operations, motorsport, field engineering, remote production, customer sites, maritime, robotics, aerospace, or automotive environments.
• Working knowledge of networking and integration, including TCP/IP, VLANs, routing, VPNs, DNS, DHCP, firewalls, and how to tell a software failure from a connectivity, sensor, or data-link problem.
• Operational discipline: you prepare thoroughly, use checklists, manage risk, escalate sensibly, and stay calm under pressure.
• Clear technical communication, including structured, unambiguous reporting that Engineering can act on and operators can understand.
• A team-first, high-ownership approach. You work well with a small, multidisciplinary team, including during extended deployments, and are willing to travel regularly and support field activity.

Nice to Have

• Experience with robotics, uncrewed systems, autonomy or mission software, sensors, telemetry, operator interfaces, or defence trials.
• Experience deploying software to edge compute or in disconnected environments, including containers and orchestration, CI/CD, infrastructure automation, observability, and controlled updates.
• Familiarity with tools such as Docker, Kubernetes, Helm, Ansible, or Terraform.
• Experience representing a technical team in customer demonstrations, trials, training, or deployments.
• Experience working in security-sensitive or controlled environments.