Forward Deployed Engineer

Description

Consequential Work. Dedicated People.

About Onebrief

Onebrief builds collaboration and AI-powered workflow software for military planning and operational coordination.

Military planning is complex by nature, requiring teams to coordinate information, people, and decisions across systems and locations. Onebrief brings planning, collaboration, simulation, and AI into one connected environment, helping teams test strategies, adapt to changing conditions, and make decisions with greater clarity when the stakes are real.

We are a distributed team of builders from military, operational, and technology backgrounds who care deeply about improving how important work gets done. Some team members work remotely, while others work directly alongside customers in operational environments around the world.

Founded in 2019, Onebrief is backed by leading investors including General Catalyst, Battery Ventures, Insight Partners, Sapphire Ventures, and Human Capital. Valued at more than $2 billion, we continue to invest in product innovation, AI capabilities, and team growth.

Why This Role Exists

Forward Deployed Engineers (FDEs) create the bridge between core software capabilities and real-world mission outcomes. Sitting at the intersection of Software Engineering, Product, Customer Mission, and Deployment, FDEs personally close technical gaps and turn operational needs into working software.

As an FDE at Onebrief, you will deploy directly alongside military operators, command staffs, and partner systems in both unclassified and restricted/air-gapped environments through agile field sprints. You will write production-grade code, inspect REST/gRPC APIs, execute schema transformations, debug distributed systems, and turn recurring field workarounds into reusable core product capabilities.

A primary focus will be building applications and integrations in and around Maven Smart System (MSS) and the War Data Platform (WDP), connecting these environments with Onebrief Core, Atom Engine, and other mission systems. You will bring hands-on technical experience working with Palantir platforms and own delivery from understanding a user’s workflow through implementation, deployment, and troubleshooting.

Responsibilities

• Personally Own Mission Outcomes: Sit directly with operational users during field embeddings to translate complex mission challenges into technically executable software solutions. Inspect schemas, write integration scripts, call APIs, analyze logs, and debug systems inside restricted customer environments.
• Build Mission-System Integrations: Develop applications, workflows, and integrations in and around MSS and WDP. Connect Onebrief Core and Atom Engine with these platforms, partner C2 systems, databases, and military data structures in complex network environments. Investigate interfaces, implement data transformations, and validate behavior across systems.
• Bridge Field Execution and Product Strategy: Identify recurring field workarounds and collaborate directly with Product and Core Engineering to convert localized fixes into generalized, reusable platform capabilities.
• Investigate and Resolve Technical Failures: Independently isolate failures across application, data, network, and authentication boundaries. Resolve issues within your scope and package escalations with reproduction steps, environmental states, logs, and root-cause hypotheses so core engineering teams can act efficiently.
• Communicate and Brief Stakeholders: Lead working sessions with users to understand operational workflows and clarify requirements. Move comfortably between whiteboarding distributed software architecture with engineers and briefing senior military leaders or command staff on technical trade-offs and operational impact.
• Minimum Qualifications
• 3+ years of progressive software engineering, solutions engineering, or field software engineering experience involving hands-on development.
• Hands-on technical experience working with Palantir platforms, such as Foundry or Maven Smart System (MSS). Relevant experience includes developing applications or workflows, configuring data models, building integrations, or deploying and troubleshooting platform capabilities. You can explain your personal contribution to a real implementation and how it supported users.
• Demonstrated ownership of a software integration from requirements through implementation and validation, including connecting APIs or data sources, transforming schemas, and diagnosing failures across systems.
• Proficiency in standard programming languages such as Python, C++, C, TypeScript, Go, or similar, and hands-on experience with REST/gRPC APIs, relational databases, data modeling, JSON/XML schemas, microservices, and cloud/edge infrastructure.
• Proven ability to parse application logs, diagnose network or authentication failures across multiple systems, and isolate root causes. Prior experience in restricted/air-gapped environments is valuable, but specific air-gapped workflows can be learned on the job.
• Experience working directly with customers or operational users to clarify requirements, explain technical trade-offs, lead interactive working sessions, and implement solutions with a high degree of autonomy.
• Ability to handle operational urgency and communicate clearly with non-technical stakeholders.
• Active Secret security clearance.
• Willingness to travel 25–50% of the time for customer field embeddings.
• Preferred Qualifications
• Direct development or integration experience with Maven Smart System (MSS) and/or the War Data Platform (WDP).
• Prior experience as a Forward Deployed Engineer or Field Software Engineer at enterprise software or defense technology companies, delivering production capabilities directly alongside customers.
• Direct experience building, deploying, or debugging software inside air-gapped DoD networks or classified environments.
• Experience with DoD software delivery, C2 systems, combatant command structures (COCOMs), operational planning workflows, or military data systems.
• Active Top Secret clearance with SCI eligibility.
• Hands-on experience using modern AI-assisted development tools to accelerate integrations, scripting, and data transformations, with the engineering judgment to review, test, and validate their output.
• Notice to Third Party Recruitment Agencies