[Hiring] Senior Forward Deployed Engineer @Aerospike

Role Description

As a Senior Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) at Aerospike, you will embed directly with customer engineering teams to build and ship real-time systems. You will bridge software engineering and customer operations by:

• Writing production-ready code
• Integrating Aerospike with enterprise data systems and AI frameworks
• Validating performance under real production workloads

In this role, you will take technical requirements from problem discovery through implementation and rollout. You will also contribute directly to Aerospike’s core capabilities by turning engagement-specific solutions into reusable libraries, reference architectures, and tooling.

What You’ll Build

• Authoritative State Foundations: Build and deploy real-time distributed data models for agent, session, and workflow state.
• Context Assembly Layers: Implement pipelines that join transactional data, streaming sources, vector search indexes, and graph relationships.
• Execution Guardrails: Integrate policy checks, authentication/authorization boundaries, execution governors, and human-in-the-loop review steps.
• Auditing and Traceability: Build logging and tracing hooks that record context snapshots, decisions, tool execution, and state mutations.
• Closed-Loop Execution Flows: Connect and automate the operational loop: State → Context → Action → Mutation → Updated State.

What You’ll Do

• Embed with Customer Teams: Work side-by-side with client engineers to translate operational challenges and specs into clean technical designs.
• Write and Integrate Production Code: Implement scalable services and integrations across Aerospike, enterprise data systems, vector engines, and agent orchestration frameworks.
• Validate Production Readiness: Own technical validation through launch, debug distributed systems issues, and ensure systems operate reliably under high traffic.
• Benchmark and Test: Test real-world operational characteristics beyond basic model benchmarks.
• Build Reusable Field Assets: Identify recurring customer requirements and feed them back into internal engineering.
• Collaborate Cross-Functionally: Partner with Product, Core Engineering, and Solutions teams to resolve platform bugs and assist client teams.

How You’ll Work with Customer & Internal Teams

Senior FDEs are the primary builders and integration engineers responsible for delivering working Operational AI implementations into production.

• Professional Services: Manages baseline infrastructure provisioning, platform migrations, cluster sizing, and general configuration.
• Technical Account Management (TAM): Maintains the day-to-day account relationship and long-term operational health.

Your Focus: You lead the technical integration, custom data modeling, and application code. You are not responsible for routine account administration, ticket escalation, or generic maintenance support.

What You’ll Bring

• 5–8+ years of hands-on software development experience building and deploying backend services, distributed systems, or high-throughput data platforms in production.
• Strong Coding Proficiency: Fluency in at least one modern systems or backend language—Go, Java, Python, or C/C++.
• Data Modeling & Storage Foundations: Practical experience working with low-latency key-value stores, distributed databases, or streaming data platforms.
• Applied AI & Context Pipelines: Hands-on experience building services that interface with LLMs, retrieval-augmented generation architectures, or agent frameworks.
• Enterprise Integration & Security: Experience implementing authentication/authorization, data validation, and auditable logging in sensitive environments.
• Collaborative Problem-Solving: Ability to navigate ambiguous requirements and communicate technical trade-offs.

Helpful Experience

• Hands-on experience with the Aerospike Real-time Data Platform, Aerospike Vector Search, or Aerospike Graph.
• Experience with distributed task queues, checkpointing, or durable workflow engines.
• Background with containerized deployments and cloud environments.
• Familiarity with distributed tracing tools.

Compensation and Impact

• Evaluation Metric: Success is evaluated on working production outcomes, robust software delivery, and the creation of reusable assets.
• Comprehensive US Benefits: Competitive base salary, equity options, 401(k) matching, comprehensive health/dental/vision coverage, and remote home office support.

Aerospike is an Equal Opportunity Employer committed to an environment free from discrimination.

To keep our recruitment pipeline as high-performance as our database, Aerospike uses AI-driven tools to streamline resume reviews, scheduling, and communication.