Senior Forward Deployed Engineer

About the role

Tagup is a defense technology company founded at MIT that is delivering logistics decision advantage with next-generation AI. We’re growing rapidly and are looking for change-makers passionate about delivering innovative technologies to solve the most challenging problems in the world’s highest stakes environments. This is an exciting opportunity to engage in meaningful work that strengthens national security and contributes to the success of U.S. and allied forces. Join us in shaping the future of defense logistics for a safer tomorrow.

Senior Forward Deployed Engineers lead customer engagements, including our most important ones. You’ll be handed an outcome rather than a specification: a program that needs our platform integrated with government data systems under real constraints. You produce the plan, make the design decisions, build it, and ship it.

You’ll work directly with customer technical staff, debug production issues in their environments, and make the speed-versus-robustness trade-offs that defense delivery demands. You’ll also raise the team around you, reviewing code, mentoring engineers, and setting the standard for how the team builds with customers.

Responsibilities

Lead customer engagements end to end: integration with government data and systems, designed and built under real constraints

Turn ambiguous requirements into technical plans, and deliver multi-week engagements without close supervision

Build custom workflows that drive adoption, usage, and engagement with key customers

Debug production issues in customer environments, including government cloud

Document design decisions that hold up under scrutiny, and review code across the team

Make sound speed-versus-robustness trade-offs under program constraints

Mentor engineers and bring what you learn in the field back to the product team

Desired Skills

5+ years of professional software engineering experience, including customer-facing or systems-integration work owned end to end

Depth in Python and/or TypeScript and SQL, data integration against messy sources, and system design under constraint

Experience deploying and debugging in environments you don’t control: government cloud, on-prem, or otherwise constrained

Judgment on trade-offs, and the ability to defend a design decision to a skeptical customer engineer and to your own team

Experience mentoring engineers and reviewing code across a team

Willingness to travel to customer sites (military installations across the U.S.)

U.S. citizenship and eligibility to obtain a U.S. government security clearance

Bonus Points

Military service or experience delivering software into defense programs. Veterans are strongly encouraged to apply

Familiarity with service supply, maintenance, and readiness data systems

Experience with accreditation processes and impact-level government environments

An active security clearance

You don’t need to check every box. If the mission and the work resonate, apply.

Salary

The estimated salary range for this position is between $150,000 and $180,000 annually. We strive to provide a competitive salary and benefits package that aligns with our employees’ experience and qualifications. Our primary objective is to attract and retain top talent, and we firmly believe in compensating our employees fairly for their invaluable contributions.

As a rapidly expanding technology company, we extend part-ownership to all team members through an Employee Stock Option Plan. Additionally, we offer comprehensive health insurance benefits, access to the company’s 401K plan, and foster a team-oriented work environment with regular company outings!

Why Join Us

The mission is real. Our software runs in front of people whose job is to keep the fleet moving — the consequences of getting it right are tangible.

Small team, high leverage. You'll have visibility from the engineering trenches to the executive team, and your work will compound.

Hard problems worth solving. Reinforcement learning applied to logistics at the scale of a military service is genuinely novel work.

Competitive comp, meaningful equity, and the kind of professional growth that comes from being trusted with big things early.

Tagup is an equal opportunity employer and individuals seeking employment with us are considered without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, marital status, physical or mental disability, veteran status, gender identity, sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by law.

Citizenship: Due to the nature of our work with the U.S. Department of Defense, applicants must be authorized to work for any employer in the U.S. We are unable to sponsor visas at this time.

We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses and identifying potential inconsistencies or verification signals in application materials based on available information. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.