Forward Deployed Engineer, Networking

Responsibilities

• Own the deployment topology of major enterprise engagements: design and lock network architecture including VPC layout, ingress/egress, private connectivity, DNS, identity-aware proxying, and public-SaaS-to-private-VPC bridges
• Translate customer constraints into workable architecture while meeting teams where they are (SecOps, Platform, Identity)
• Herd customer-side teams (network, security, platform, identity) and drive alignment on deployment plans with customer-facing communication
• Build integrations that bridge gaps: identity-aware proxies, private link brokers, egress gateways, webhook bridges — production-quality code that customers can deploy after handoff
• Build alongside Redpanda core engineers to extend ADP networking primitives when field topology problems surface gaps
• Be the topology authority across the FDE function; build reusable patterns from engagements
• Feed learnings back to Product and Engineering to productize common patterns

Requirements

• Production networking depth: designed and operated enterprise cloud networks — VPC architecture in AWS/GCP/Azure, private connectivity (Transit Gateway, PrivateLink, ExpressRoute, Interconnect), hybrid networking, identity-aware proxies, egress controls
• Code that runs in production: strong scripting/backend skills (Go, Python, TypeScript) and comfort with infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, Pulumi, CDK)
• SaaS-to-private-network integration patterns: built systems where public SaaS (Slack, Teams, GitHub, OpenAI APIs, identity providers) talks to private VPCs without compromising security posture
• Customer-facing communication: can sit across from principal network engineers, security architects, or VPs of Platform Engineering and earn trust on technical depth
• Patience for cross-team work: experience driving five customer teams to commit to architecture by a deadline

Nice-to-Haves

• Experience in regulated industries (financial services, healthcare, defense/public sector)
• Experience with air-gapped or BYOC deployments
• Background in zero-trust/identity-aware networking (BeyondCorp, Cloudflare Access, Tailscale, Twingate)
• Shipped private-link or hybrid-network products at a vendor (Snowflake, Confluent, Databricks, MongoDB Atlas, Cloudflare, HashiCorp)
• Experience in a forward-deployed model (Anthropic FDE, OpenAI Deployed, Palantir FDSE, Stripe FDE) with networking focus