Forward Deployed Engineer / Solutions Architect
Lead technical implementation in real customer environments and turn every engagement into a repeatable playbook.
About this role
Sphere serves technical organizations that need trusted retrieval, citations, and secure deployment, not a self-serve SaaS tool. That means real, hands-on implementation: deployment, ingestion, integration, and workflow fit, often inside aerospace, defense, intelligence, and advanced-R&D environments. You will own that work end to end and turn what you learn into repeatable playbooks. This is a highly technical, customer-facing build role, not traditional post-sales support or project management.
What you'll own
- Technical implementation of pilots and evaluations, end to end
- Customer technical discovery across environment, workflow, and integration constraints
- Repository ingestion setup and sync configuration
- Coordination with customer IT, security, and engineering stakeholders
- Translating customer needs into internal implementation plans
- Playbooks that make each successive onboarding faster and cleaner
What you'll do
- Lead technical onboarding for new pilot customers
- Map customer environments, document sources, and workflow requirements
- Configure and support ingestion, retrieval, and deployment in real customer contexts
- Work with platform engineering to clear customer-specific blockers
- Recommend the right implementation path, whether UI, MCP server, or a deeper integration
- Capture what is reusable from every engagement
What we're looking for
- Strong technical foundation and willingness to get into real deployment details
- Experience in forward-deployed, solutions, or implementation engineering (or a similar hybrid)
- Comfort working directly with technical customers in ambiguous environments
- Clear communication across engineering, IT, security, and non-technical stakeholders
- Strong troubleshooting instincts, systems thinking, and follow-through
Strong pluses
- Enterprise, aerospace, defense, lab, or regulated customer environments
- Customer-hosted software, secure integrations, or document/data onboarding
- Familiarity with AI systems, retrieval workflows, or search/document-processing infrastructure
- Running pilots and POCs in messy, real-world conditions
Your first 90 days
- Own at least one active pilot implementation end to end
- Produce a clear onboarding and implementation playbook from a live engagement
- Shorten time-to-value for a new customer environment
- Surface the recurring blockers between customer interest and a successful pilot
Compensation
$150K - $200K base salary, plus 0.5% - 1.0% equity and benefits.
Individual pay is determined by experience, relevant education, and/or training.
Benefits
- Health, dental, and vision insurance
- Flexible paid time off
- Company-provided equipment
As an early-stage company, we're committed to building a benefits package that grows with us.
To conform to U.S. Government export regulations, applicant must be a (i) U.S. citizen or national, (ii) U.S. lawful, permanent resident (aka green card holder), (iii) Refugee under 8 U.S.C. § 1157, or (iv) Asylee under 8 U.S.C. § 1158, or be eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State. Learn more about the ITAR here.
Sphere is an Equal Opportunity Employer; employment with Sphere is governed on the basis of merit, competence and qualifications and will not be influenced in any manner by race, color, religion, gender, national origin/ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, mental or physical disability or any other legally protected status.