Forward Deployed Engineer

SewerAI is transforming underground infrastructure management through AI-powered inspection and risk analysis. Our platform helps contractors, engineering firms, and utilities unlock valuable insights from sewer inspection data—turning hours of manual video review into actionable intelligence in minutes. After doubling our customer base over the past year, we’re now entering an exciting phase of accelerated growth.

About the Role

SewerAI is looking for a Forward Deployed Engineer to join our Engineering team. This role sits at the intersection of customer discovery, project management, and deep technical execution—and is critical to ensuring customers successfully deploy, integrate, and operationalize our platform within their existing systems and workflows.

You'll own complex implementations end-to-end: data migrations, ETL workflows, scripting, API integrations, SaaS-to-SaaS connectivity, and system configuration—often working with large, inconsistent, and imperfect datasets across multiple systems.

Success here requires strong problem-solving, comfort with ambiguity, and the ability to translate complex technical concepts into clear, practical guidance for customers. This role directly impacts customer success, product adoption, and company growth.

What You'll Do

Customer Discovery & Scope Management

• Lead technical discovery sessions to understand customer systems, data, workflows, and constraints
• Define implementation scope, timelines, and deliverables in collaboration with Customer Enablement, Sales, and Engineering
• Translate customer requirements into clear technical plans—including mappings, transformations, and integration design
• Identify risks early, especially around data quality, system compatibility, and workflow complexity
• Set clear success criteria and validation strategies; manage customer expectations throughout

Project Management & Implementation Delivery

• Own Professional Services projects from kickoff through final delivery
• Drive timelines, milestones, and cross-team coordination
• Maintain detailed documentation of configurations, mappings, and integrations
• Take full ownership of outcomes—data correctness, system behavior, and usability
• Communicate clearly with both technical and non-technical stakeholders

Data Migration, ETL, Scripting & Integrations

• Perform data imports, exports, and transformations between systems
• Design and execute ETL workflows for structured and semi-structured data
• Write scripts to automate data transformation, validation, and migration tasks using Python, JavaScript, Bash
• Build and manage ingestion pipelines for files, databases, APIs, and media datasets
• Integrate systems using APIs, webhooks, and custom scripts
• Configure SaaS-to-SaaS integrations and automation workflows
• Work across tools including AWS (S3, Lambda, IAM), REST APIs, Temporal (or similar orchestration), Zapier/Celigo, and SQL/CSV/JSON/media datasets

Data Mapping, Validation & Reconciliation

• Define field-level mappings between legacy systems and platform data models
• Reconcile source and target schema differences; ensure referential integrity
• Handle real-world data issues: missing fields, inconsistent formats, duplicates, schema drift
• Validate data through sampling, QA checks, and full-scale verification
• Troubleshoot mismatches across files, metadata, APIs, and database records
• Execute staged migrations and validation before full production rollout

Customer-Facing Technical Consulting

• Engage directly with customer technical teams, managers, and stakeholders
• Explain technical topics in clear, practical terms
• Guide customers on best practices for data structure, workflows, and integrations
• Recommend implementation approaches based on real-world constraints
• Push back on infeasible solutions with clear reasoning and alternatives
• Serve as the trusted technical advisor through onboarding, expansion, and complex deployments

Internal Collaboration & Tooling

• Partner with Product, Engineering, Customer Enablement, and Support
• Build scripts, utilities, and templates to improve implementation efficiency
• Create repeatable patterns for migrations, integrations, and onboarding
• Contribute to internal documentation and playbooks
• Provide product feedback based on real customer use cases
• Help scale Professional Services delivery through better tooling and automation

What We're Looking For

Required Experience

• 4+ years in Professional Services, Solutions Engineering, Implementation Engineering, or a similar customer-facing technical role
• Proven track record managing end-to-end technical implementations or migrations
• Experience working directly with customers in technical environments
• Strong problem-solving ability in ambiguous, real-world situations
• Clear communicator with both technical and non-technical audiences

Required Technical Skills

• Scripting experience — Python, JavaScript, Bash, or similar
• Strong SQL and relational database fundamentals
• ETL workflows and data migration experience
• API and system integration experience
• Comfort working with large, inconsistent, or unstructured datasets
• Familiarity with cloud platforms (AWS preferred)
• Ability to troubleshoot across multiple systems (DB, API, files, UI)
• Experience automating workflows or data processes
• Experience with AI code tools

Nice to Have

• GIS, asset management, or infrastructure software experience
• Legacy system data migration experience
• Large-scale data ingestion or media dataset experience
• SaaS or high-growth startup environment experience
• Enterprise customer support experience

What Success Looks Like

• Complex implementations delivered on time and trusted by customers
• Data migrations that are accurate, validated, and production-ready
• Integrations that work reliably across systems
• Customers who feel confident in their technical decisions and workflows
• Internal teams who rely on you for the hardest implementation problems
• Professional Services processes that become more scalable over time