Founding Forward Deployed Engineer

DRYFT Ideas only change the world when you build them at scale. That’s what Dryft is here for. Dryft builds models that automate complex human decisions in manufacturing operations. We capture the knowledge of experienced operators across supply chain, production planning, engineering and more, simulate the consequences of their decisions, and use this understanding to help run their business. Our customers include some of the largest robotics, machine and component manufacturers in the world. We’re a small, talent-dense team with modest roots and a love for the physical world: cars, machines, planes. Our team includes graduates from Stanford, Berkeley, CDTM and TUM, winners of Stanford TreeHacks, recipients of Fulbright & Haniel scholarships, and people who have built everything from robots and race cars to software with millions of downloads. What matters more to us than credentials is how people work: humility, hard work, speed, kindness, deep customer care, and a willingness to take on problems others avoid. Working at Dryft is hard. You get unusual ownership early on, with real responsibility. But that’s also what makes it one of the biggest learning experiences of your life. We’re backed by founders and operators behind some of the most legendary tech companies of our time, Tier-1 U.S. venture firms, and board members of global industrial companies. ERPs ran the physical world for half a century. Dryft is building the intelligence layer that will power the next. THE ROLE As our Founding Forward Deployed Engineer, you split your time 50/50 between engineering and customer interaction. No role will teach you more about becoming a great founder, listener & builder. One day you're integrating a legacy ERP, the next you're on a flight to a shop floor in Mexico, and in between you ship the fix. You'll navigate stakeholders from IT to the C-level, all at once, and nothing really prepares you for it. Lead full-stack rollouts – own implementations end-to-end, from scoping and onboarding to integration and training, and align IT teams, engineers and C-level execs across Germany, the EU and the USDesign the product backbone – work hands-on with users, translate their pain into product improvements, and prototype features yourself, ideally writing production code when neededTurn operations into product – every deployment becomes a blueprint for scale: you turn what you learned into reusable product features, data models and playbooks, and grow into roles like CPO or COO This is a high-ownership, zero-handholding role, and only for someone who loves turning complexity into clarity and ships working solutions under pressure. YOU Fast-paced experience – 2+ years in a top-tier role (e.g., consulting), as a founder, or as an early employee in a high-growth startup, with a technical degree or backgroundEngineer first – you write production code, understand systems end-to-end, and when something breaks at a customer, you find the root causeIndustrial background – experience in manufacturing, industrial software, procurement, supply chain or another industrial domain is a plusProduct-minded – you listen to rants about ERP, nod wisely, and somehow turn them into product features that feel like magicQuality-obsessed – you hold yourself to a high bar, dive deep into problems, and care about getting it right, not just getting it doneUltra-professional & detail-obsessed – you earn trust with structure, polish, and docs so clean even a CTO stops asking questionsCrisis communicator – when things get hard, people look to you; you calm an impatient exec, win over a skeptical IT leader, and still crack a joke in the middle of itDown-to-earth & relatable – you bond with shop-floor operators as easily as with boardroom execs, and you'll put on the safety shoes without being askedRelocation – you're ready to work onsite in Munich or San Francisco (we support visa), with 10 to 30% travel TECH STACK FE (TypeScript): React, Chakra UI v3, TanStack Router, TanStack Query, ViteBE (Python): FastAPI with Pydantic v2, Temporal, Postgres with pgvector, dagsterAI: Pydantic AI, Langfuse