Lead Forward Deployed Engineer | Hybrid Chicago

Coda Search is proud to partner with a venture-backed B2B supply chain software company on a Lead Forward Deployed Engineer hire. The role is based in downtown Chicago and is open to senior, staff, or principal-level engineers in the Chicago metro area who can be on-site two days per week.

Comp : roughly around $175,000 (negotiable depending on experience) + bonus + meaningful equity package

Benefits : Comprehensive benefits including H/V/D, 401(k), PTO & other ancillary benefits

Location : Downtown Chicago, IL (Hybrid, 2 days on-site per week)

What's in it for you?

• Build first, lead by example: This is a hands-on seat for an engineer who writes the code, debugs the integration, and sets the standard the rest of the team follows.
• A direct line to the top: You'll work closely with the CEO and help shape how the company scales delivery as its customer base grows.
• Real technical influence: You'll decide what gets built once in the platform and what stays custom for a single customer.
• Equity upside: A meaningful equity stake in a company growing quickly with experienced operators at the helm.
• Cross-functional reach: You'll work daily with platform engineering, product, implementation, and customer success.

What will your day look like?

• Own customer builds end to end: Take customer implementations from kickoff through full adoption, building the services, integrations, and business configuration yourself.
• Lead other engineers: Set technical direction for the forward deployed team through code review, pairing, and mentoring.
• Stop building the same thing twice: Spot repeated patterns across customer implementations early and get common needs built once in the platform.
• Draw the line between custom and core: Work with the platform team to decide what belongs in the shared platform and what stays account-specific.
• Run configuration at scale: Build tooling to manage, version, validate, and monitor a large and fast-growing volume of customer configurations across ERPs and partner programs.
• Raise the engineering bar: Help define how customer engineering work is scoped, reviewed, tested, and deployed.
• Put AI to work: Use AI to generate configuration, data mappings, tests, and documentation so each engineer can cover more accounts.
• Flag risk early: Track hours per implementation and configuration errors, and raise risks to leadership before they become problems.

Who are you?

• You're a senior, staff, or principal-level engineer. You've built integrations, APIs, or data pipelines yourself and you still enjoy doing it.
• You've led other engineers technically. You've been the tech lead, owned code review, or mentored a team; formal people management is a plus but not required.
• You've worked directly with customers. Forward deployed, solutions, or implementation engineering is the strongest background.
• You have a product mindset. When someone says a customer needs something custom, you ask whether it really does.
• You've turned custom work into something reusable. You've built tooling or frameworks that converted one-off customer work into configuration or platform capability.
• You write things down. You turn patterns and decisions into runbooks so the team scales.
• Bonus points for experience with ERP integrations, EDI, or supply chain software for distributors and manufacturers.

Application & Contact Information

To apply, please apply directly here on LinkedIn. For more immediate consideration, feel free to send me an email directly to [email protected].

Related Terms : Forward Deployed Engineer, Lead Forward Deployed Engineer, Senior Forward Deployed Engineer, Staff Engineer, Principal Engineer, Tech Lead, Solutions Engineer, Implementation Engineer, Integration Engineer, Customer Engineer, Software Engineer, Solutions Architect, API Integrations, Data Pipelines, ERP Integration, EDI, Supply Chain Software, B2B SaaS, Platform Engineering, Configuration Management, AI-Assisted Development, Chicago Engineering Jobs, Hybrid Engineering Jobs