Forward Deployed Engineer (US/Defense)

About the Role:

We’re building context/fab , a venture-backed industrial AI startup building the agentic operating system for the future of manufacturing .

Our vision is the self-aware factory : factories that understand their own equipment, processes, data and operational context, and where AI agents can reason across this context to solve real manufacturing problems.

context/fab automatically connects fragmented industrial data and knowledge into a Context Graph , providing the foundation for agents across production, quality, maintenance, logistics and engineering.

We work directly with large industrial enterprises and leading SMEs , bringing this technology into real factories and operational workflows.

As our Forward Deployed Engineer , you’ll work directly with customers from discovery through deployment and expansion. You’ll understand how their factories operate, identify high-value problems, connect their systems and data to context/fab, and configure and deploy agents that deliver measurable operational impact.

What you will do:

• Work directly with customers to understand their factories, workflows, systems and most valuable operational problems
• Lead technical discovery, workshops and use-case definition together with customer operations, engineering and IT teams
• Translate manufacturing problems into agents and custom capabilities for the customer and measurable success criteria
• Build, configure and deploy agents and workflows for production, quality, maintenance, logistics and engineering use cases
• Connect customer data across PLCs and industrial protocols such as OPC UA and MQTT, SCADA and historians, MES, ERP, QMS, CMMS, databases, APIs and technical documentation
• Use our automated Context Graph capabilities to contextualize factory data and validate the resulting representation together with customer experts
• Work closely with customers during pilots and rollouts, troubleshoot issues and continuously improve the solution
• Identify recurring customer needs and translate field learnings into clear requirements for our product and engineering teams
• Support technical sales and solution discovery for new customers

What makes you a great fit:

• Strong technical foundation across software, data or industrial systems
• Product-minded and excited about discovering and deeply understanding customer problems
• Comfortable working directly with engineers, plant teams, operations leaders and enterprise IT
• Experience with Python, APIs, databases or data integration
• Experience with manufacturing, industrial systems, AI agents or enterprise software is a strong plus
• Entrepreneurial mindset with a strong bias for ownership, urgency and building from zero to one in ambiguous environments
• Naturally driven to take end-to-end responsibility for customer outcomes and to operate with the autonomy of a founder inside a customer context
• Willing to travel regularly to customer sites
• Fluent in English; German or other European languages are a plus

Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s or Master’s in Computer Science, Engineering, AI/ML, Data Science or a related field, or equivalent practical experience
• Strong communication skills and comfort operating independently in a fast-moving environment
• This role is dedicated to deployments of context/fab in U.S. defense, aerospace and ITAR-controlled manufacturing environments. It requires eligibility for a U.S. security clearance and the ability to meet ITAR and customer facility-access requirements. These requirements apply only to this role, not our general FDE openings.

Why join us:

• Build the agentic operating system for the self-aware factory
• Work directly with large industrial enterprises and leading SMEs on real production problems
• Shape both our product and how it is deployed from an early stage
• Work directly with the founders and a highly technical team
• Help build deep-tech capabilities that keep manufacturing competitive in Europe
• Competitive salary and meaningful early equity
• Grow faster than almost anywhere else: experience a 10-year career in 2 years