Senior Forward Deployed Engineer - Kubernetes
About the role
Location
This is a remote role based in North America, with a strong preference for candidates located in the U.S. Eastern Time Zone. The role primarily supports customers across the Eastern Time Zone and EMEA. Regular travel is not expected. Occasional travel may be required for customer visits, company offsites, conferences, or other business needs.
The Opportunity
As a Senior Forward Deployed Engineer at Stacklok, you sit where platform engineering meets AI, bringing deep Kubernetes expertise to help enterprises adopt Stacklok Enterprise and run AI agents securely on the infrastructure they already trust. Every environment is different, so the role builds the custom operators that fit the platform to each customer's stack and reach production fast.
This is hands-on, high-ownership work, and it is not only technical. Forward-deployed engagements run end to end through the role: standing up custom proof-of-concepts for Design Partners and customers, extending the platform, coordinating the technical work, and keeping customer and team aligned as things move toward production. When unlocking value means changing how the product deploys to Kubernetes, that work comes back to the platform itself.
Kubernetes expertise is what unlocks value fast, and demand for this work is outpacing our capacity. The role offers a front-row seat to how leading enterprises put AI into production, and real influence over what gets built next. For a platform engineer who wants that expertise to land directly with customers, this is the chance to do it at the frontier of enterprise AI.
What Success Looks Like: First 6-12 Months
- Ramped quickly on the platform and Stacklok Enterprise architecture, becoming the technical SME the AppliedAI team relies on for enterprise engagements.
- Built trusted relationships across the team and with customers, and resolved a real customer blocker or shipped a first meaningful change.
- Took one or more Design Partner engagements from first conversation to production deployment, owning the technical relationship across the full lifecycle.
- Contributed code or architecture decisions back to the core platform based on real customer needs, and helped leadership scope the next set of engagements.