Forward Deployed Engineer - Buildkite

About Buildkite

Buildkite's CI platform is trusted by the world's leading engineering teams, helping ship software used by more than 1 billion people every day. Companies including Canva, Meta, Mistral AI, and NVIDIA rely on Buildkite to run builds, tests, and deployments on their infrastructure, ours, or both—giving them the speed, reliability, and flexibility to ship with confidence.

About the Role

Our largest customers run CI/CD at frontier scale. AI is driving their build and test workloads up sharply, and more of these large, established companies want a partner to come in and build alongside them so they can grow and scale even faster.

As one of Buildkite's first Forward Deployed Engineers, you'll take on scoped engagements with strategic customers from design through delivery. Customers pay for an outcome: you work out what they actually need, agree on a clear deliverable, build it as production code, and land it in the platform. It's hands-on engineering with real customer access.

You'll spend time on-site with the platform teams behind some of the most demanding CI workloads in the world, in the room with their engineers and executives, and you'll stay accountable until what you built works and is handed off. You'll also shape how it runs (how we scope, value, and hand off work) by implementing the first engagements, not by writing the playbook first.

You'll sit in our Revenue org alongside Solutions Architects and Technical Account Managers, close to customers and Sales, and work hand in hand with Product and our Engineering team in Australia. The role is based on the US West Coast, with regular travel to customer sites (around 25%).

What You'll Do

• Scope strategic customer engagements: Partner with Solution Architects and TAMs to dig into what stands between a customer and Buildkite, identifying true technical gaps. Spot patterns across customers and feed them back to Product so recurring workarounds become platform roadmap items.
• Define clear technical deliverables: Turn gaps into scoped projects with clear deliverables, estimates, and signed-off exit criteria, keeping work within scope as requirements evolve.
• Build core platform features: Write production code held to the same high engineering standard and using the same frontier tools as our core product engineers. Hand off cleanly so additions become supported, permanent features of Buildkite.
• Shape the FDE discipline: Help Solutions Architects and Account Executives recognize FDE opportunities in deals and clarify what FDE is and isn't as the function evolves through live iteration.

Qualifications

• Production Software Experience: You have shipped production software end to end in the last few years—code you owned and were fully accountable for, not just contributed to.
• High Technical Bar: You meet the same rigorous engineering standards as product engineers building core infrastructure.
• Technical & Business Translation: You can translate business needs into technical specifications and back again, staying composed when navigating complex customer environments.
• Enterprise Savvy: At ease with large enterprises, structured technical evaluations, security reviews, and engineering leadership.
• Scoping Expertise: Ability to transform vague requirements into defined, shippable projects while managing scope boundaries mid-engagement.
• Customer & Product Focus: You prioritize solving the customer's actual problem over writing speculative code, with strong product judgment to distinguish one-offs from broad platform needs.
• Travel Flexibility: Comfortable traveling to customer sites approximately 25% of the time.

Bonus Points

• Experience leading or supporting migrations from other CI/CD systems.
• Background as an early engineer at a developer tools, infrastructure, or B2B SaaS company, or prior forward deployed engineering experience.
• Experience working inside or alongside engineering orgs at high-growth SaaS companies or large enterprises.
• Hands-on familiarity with Buildkite.

Benefits

• Annual Leave: 20 days paid annual leave plus 10 days sick & carer's leave.
• Remote-Work Allowance: Ongoing allowance covering home office, internet, and wellness needs.
• Retirement & Healthcare: Comprehensive healthcare coverage and retirement benefits tailored to your location.
• Parental Leave: 16 weeks paid parental leave for primary carers (6 weeks for secondary carers).
• Mental Health: Confidential EAP and dedicated mental health support resources.
• Learning & Development: Dedicated budget and time for conferences, courses, and coaching.
• Work from Anywhere: Flexibility to work from anywhere in the world for up to 6 weeks per year.