Forward Deployed Engineer
Washington D.C.$170k - $225k + equity + bonusFull-timePosted 2mo ago
About the role
Forward Deployed Engineer at Northwood Space, a mission-focused role partnering with satellite operators to deploy and optimize Northwood's ground station network. Responsible for technical leadership across capture, onboarding, deployment, and ongoing customer success, translating mission needs into priorities for Engineering, Product, and Business Development.
Responsibilities
- Make customer missions succeed on Northwood's network.
- Serve as the primary technical contact for customers during capture, evaluation, onboarding, and post-deployment.
- Get hands-on with implementation and integration — working directly alongside customers and Engineering to bring up, troubleshoot, and validate their operations on the network.
- Ship code, debug integrations, and validate operations alongside customers and Engineering
- Support Business Development on qualification, proposals, and expansion.
- Lead technical discovery, exchanges, demos, and readiness reviews alongside Program Management.
- Learn each customer's mission, workflows, constraints, decision criteria, and success metrics in depth.
- Translate customer needs into clear priorities for Engineering, Product, and BD.
- Surface friction points, adoption blockers, and recurring needs that should shape the product and network.
- Coordinate onboarding and deployment readiness — clarifying requirements, flagging risks, and aligning internal teams around customer objectives.
- Build reusable discovery frameworks and customer-facing materials that help Northwood scale capture and customer success.
Qualifications
- 7+ years in customer-facing technical roles: solutions or systems engineering, mission operations, technical business development, capture engineering, solutions architecture, or TAM.
- Bachelor's in EE, CE, CS, Aerospace, or related field — or equivalent experience with mission systems, ground systems, networking, cloud, or satellite operations.
- Track record taking complex customer engagements from discovery through deployment or expansion.
- Proven ability to build trust with technical customers and turn ambiguous mission needs into concrete priorities.
- Comfortable working in ambiguous environments spanning hardware, software, networking, and business objectives.
- Strong communicator — able to lead technical conversations, write clear customer materials, and brief internal stakeholders.
- Effective across BD, Engineering, Product, Program Management, and customer teams.
- Willing to travel up to 30%.
Skills
Required:Customer-facing technical leadershipSystems engineering / mission operationsCommunication
Benefits
- equity
- comprehensive medical, vision, and dental coverage
- flexible spending accounts
- flexible time off
- 10 or more paid holidays per year
- retirement savings plans
- opportunities for professional development
Last updated Sep 23, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.
About northwoodspace
The world runs on space. We’re building the infrastructure to keep it connected.
The world runs on space. We’re building the technology to keep it connected.
spaceinfrastructureground segmenttechnology
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