# Forward Deployed Engineer - Systems

**Company:** [Modal](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/modal)
**Location:** New York, NY, San Francisco, CA
**Role:** Solutions Architecture
**Salary:** $180k – $240k/yr
**Experience:** 3+ years
**Skills:** AWS, GCP, Azure, Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform, Pulumi, CloudFormation, Distributed Systems, Infrastructure As Code
**Posted:** 2025-09-23

> Forward Deployed Engineer partners with AI companies to architect and deploy large-scale production workloads on Modal's serverless platform, leading technical discovery, migrations from AWS/GCP/Azure, and demos. Requires 3+ years software engineering with cloud, containers, and distributed systems expertise.

## Job Description

## Responsibilities
- Work hands-on with companies like Suno, Lovable, Cognition, and Meta to architect and deploy massive-scale production workloads on Modal's platform.
- Lead technical discovery and architecture sessions with prospective and existing customers.
- Architect migration paths from existing cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, Azure) to Modal's serverless platform.
- Collaborate with Modal's product and sales teams, contributing to the platform as both an engineer and a product stakeholder.
- Build trusted relationships with technical leaders (CTOs, VPs of Engineering, ML leads) at companies doing frontier AI work.
- Conduct technical demos, experiments, and proof-of-concepts that make Modal's infrastructure advantages tangible.

## Requirements
- 3+ years of professional software engineering experience.
- Hands-on experience with cloud platforms (**AWS**, **GCP**, **Azure**) — compute, storage, networking, and container orchestration (**Docker**, **Kubernetes**).
- Familiarity with distributed systems architecture, data pipelines, and Infrastructure as Code (**Terraform**, **Pulumi**, **CloudFormation**).
- Strong communicator who can go deep on systems architecture with an infrastructure team and clearly articulate tradeoffs to technical leadership.
- Genuine interest in working directly with customers — you find it energizing to understand someone else's problem and help them solve it.

## Bonus
- Experience leading large-scale migration efforts, open-source contributions, or side projects you're proud of.

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