Founding Forward Deployed Engineer
Role Overview
This senior-level role involves operating at the intersection of product, engineering, and operations, with 50% engineering and 50% customer interaction. As a Founding Forward Deployed Engineer, you will design product backbones, translate user pain into improvements, prototype features, and lead full-stack rollouts end-to-end, including scoping, integration, and training. You will work in a small, talent-dense team to turn operations into scalable product features and shape how Dryft scales, with high ownership and impact on the company's growth.
Perks & Benefits
The role is fully remote with 10–30% travel required across Germany, the EU, and the US, offering flexibility in location. You will work directly with the CEO and CTO, providing significant career growth opportunities into roles like CPO or COO, and be part of a high-impact, entrepreneurial culture backed by experienced leaders. Benefits likely include a competitive salary, equity, and a collaborative environment focused on turning complexity into clarity.
Full Job Description
DRYFT
Dryft builds intelligent systems that automate complex human decisions in manufacturing operations
We’re a small, talent-dense team with modest roots and a love for the physical world - cars, machines, planes. Our team includes graduates from Stanford, Berkeley, CDTM, TUM, winners of Stanford TreeHacks, recipients of Fulbright & Haniel scholarships, and builders of everything from robots and race cars to software with millions of downloads.
We’re backed by the founders and leaders behind Amazon, Facebook, Stripe, Applied Intuition, & others; General Catalyst & Neo, and board members of global industrial companies.
Today, we’re already saving customers millions. But this is only the beginning. ERPs ran the physical world for half a century. Dryft is powering the next.
THE ROLE
This role is our most entrepreneurial. I no other role will you learn more about how to become a great founder, listener & builder.
As our Founding Forward Deployed Engineer, you’ll operate at the intersection of product, engineering, and operations. 50% Engineering, 50% Customer interaction.
Design the product backbone. Work hands-on with users, translate their pain into product improvements, and prototype features yourself - ideally writing production code when needed.
Turn operations into product. Every deployment becomes a blueprint for scale — you’ll transform learnings into reusable product features, data models, and playbooks that move Dryft from bespoke to productized.
Lead full-stack rollouts. Own implementations end-to-end: from scoping and onboarding to integration and training. Align IT teams, engineers, and C-level execs across Germany, the EU, and the US (10–30% travel).
Shape how Dryft scales. Work directly with the CEO & CTO to define the product DNA, build the foundation for future teams, and grow into roles like CPO or COO.
This is a high-ownership, zero-handholding role for someone who loves turning complexity into clarity and shipping solutions that just work.
YOU
Product architect at heart. You turn ERP frustrations into intuitive features. You care deeply about UX, speed, and simplicity.
Sharp mind: You pick up new concepts extremely quickly. You listen. You remember the details - even of things you never heard about.
Systems thinker. You design processes that scale - in code, in operations, and in how people work. You think in data and automation.
Quality-obsessed. You hold yourself to a high bar, dive deep into problems, and care about getting it right - not just getting it done.
Confident communicator. You can calm an impatient exec, convince a skeptical IT leader, and still keep humor in the room.
Down-to-earth & relatable. You bond with shop-floor operators as easily as with boardroom execs.
Fluent German & English speaker. Our customers are global, and you’ll move between San Francisco, the US Midwest, Mexico and the heart of German manufacturing.
TECH STACK
FE (TypeScript): React, Chakra UI v3, TanStack Router, TanStack Query, Vite
BE (Python): FastAPI with Pydantic v2, SQLModel, Postgres with pgvector, dagster
AI: Pydantic AI, Langfuse
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