ABOUT OUTWARD INTELLIGENCE
Every day, leaders make high-stakes decisions based on slow data, messy surveys, or gut instinct. We're building the infrastructure to change that. Outward Intelligence is an AI-powered research platform that helps companies understand what people think - and why - so they can make smarter, faster decisions. Our clients include some of the most recognized consumer brands in the country, and they trust us because we combine the rigor of traditional research with the speed and precision of modern technology. We're a small, fast-moving team where your work has a direct line to real business outcomes. If you want to be close to the work, close to the customers, and building something that matters - this is the place.
ROLE
The Forward Deployed Engineer is a key role at Outward Intelligence, reporting directly to the technical co-founder. You'll be embedded with our research team, using our platform and extending what it can do so that it actually runs our clients' research programs. This role is highly operational. It needs a deep understanding of each client's business, and it is more about delivering outcomes than building product.
You'll be an individual contributor with a leader's instincts. You'll take on the hardest client problems, such as years of historical data from other vendors, survey instruments that have changed over time, and analysis the platform can't do yet, and you'll see them through to results clients can rely on. You'll use AI heavily, not only as an assistant but to build robust frameworks that automate the mechanical work and still produce high-quality output. If you get excited when a client makes a better business decision because of your work, and you enjoy fixing broken things, this role is for you.
RESPONSIBILITIES
- Bring client history into the platform: Lead historical data ingestions, bringing a client's existing research into our data model. This means reading survey instruments, tracking how questions and answer options changed from wave to wave, and working with our researchers to make and document the modeling decisions that keep years of history accurate and comparable.
- Connect vendors and methodologies: Work with researchers to build backcasting models that align data from previous vendors with a client's new live tracker. Consolidate multiple survey instruments by product or category into one coherent view.
- Build AI-powered frameworks: Go beyond using AI tools. Design robust, repeatable frameworks that automate ingestion, validation, and analysis, and that produce output clients can trust.
- Analyze beyond the platform: Work with our research team on analysis inside the platform. Where the platform falls short, fill the gap with Postgres, Python, R, or SPSS.
- Be our most demanding user: Use the platform alongside clients every day. Find gaps and bugs, fix what you can yourself, and send the rest to the core product team with clear, actionable reports.
- Run client systems: Set up and own the systems clients depend on, such as SSO configuration and client data feeds, until they just work.
- Support sales and proposals: Help with demos, assess what's feasible when we scope proposals, and give our research and sales teams an honest read on what the product can and can't do today.
- Communicate with clients: Work directly with client stakeholders, from insights leaders to their technical teams, and translate between business questions and technical reality.
- Own outcomes: Take problems from ambiguous to done, pull in the people you need, and measure your success by whether clients make better decisions.
REQUIRED BACKGROUND
- At least 5 years of experience in a technical, client-facing role such as forward deployed engineering, solutions engineering, data engineering, or technical consulting
- Strong SQL and PostgreSQL skills, and proficiency in Python
- Proven experience ingesting, cleaning, and modeling messy real-world data whose structure changes over time
- Heavy, sophisticated use of AI: you've built frameworks and automation with AI agents to solve problems and run analysis, not just chatted with a model
- Strong business sense: you understand what a client is trying to decide and work backward from there
- Excellent written and verbal communication, with real experience working directly with clients and non-technical stakeholders
- Leadership as an individual contributor: you've driven projects across researchers, engineers, and clients without formal authority
- Grit and a bias to action: you like getting things done and fixing broken things
- Enough comfort in a modern codebase (TypeScript, React, Node) to diagnose and fix bugs yourself
- Bonus: experience with market research or survey data (SPSS, survey instruments, tracking studies, weighting), R or statistical modeling, SSO/identity (SAML/OIDC), AWS, or building client data feeds
