Forward Deployed Engineer

Why this role exists

We are 13 people. We run Talonic in production for energy utilities, pharma distribution, automotive and US logistics. The platform works. What it takes to win each account is someone who can go deep on a real, messy customer problem and come back with a system that runs.

You are not handed tickets. You are handed a problem, a customer, and the platform — and you are expected to come back with something that works. We care much more about what you can ship than what your CV says you are. Our strongest builder came to us as a product manager.

The charter

• Sit in customer workshops and leave with the data model in your head

  Understand a messy real-world process — contracts, invoices, scanned engineering diagrams, forty-year-old archives — and design the schema that makes it queryable.

• Design and build schemas and extraction pipelines on the Talonic platform

  From data model to working extraction. You design it and you build it — not separate people.

• Build the downstream layer

  Validation rules, normalisation, delivery into SAP, Ivalua, Dynamics, Snowflake — whatever the customer runs. The integration is part of the job.

• Build agents and MCP integrations that put customer data to work

  Prototype fast with AI tooling, then harden what survives contact with production. The prototype is not the delivery.

• Own delivery end to end and be the technical face of Talonic to the account

  Enterprise stakeholders, procurement, IT security, a skeptical CFO. You can hold the room and you can explain the decision they are paying for.

The profile

• You build constantly. You have shipped things nobody asked you to build.The instinct to make something is more important to us than the title on your CV. Show us what you’ve built.
• You are fluent with agentic coding tools and you use them as leverage, not as a crutchYou can read the code they write and you know when it is wrong. AI is how you move faster — not how you avoid understanding what you ship.
• You have real technical depth somewhereData modelling, backend, systems, ML, industrial process engineering. We do not care which one — we care that it is deep enough to matter when things get hard.
• You have product instinctYou can tell the difference between what a customer asked for and what they need. That distinction is the job.
• You can hold a roomEnterprise stakeholders, procurement, IT security, a skeptical CFO. You have explained a technical decision to someone paying for it and they trusted you.
• You dive into a problem until it is finishedReliability matters more here than speed. Prototypes that get declared victories are not deliveries.
• English fluent. German is a strong plus for our DACH accounts.Most of our enterprise customers are in the DACH market.

• You want a defined backlog and a clear specThe spec is the customer problem. You write the backlog.
• You want to work only on core platform internals and never see a customerCustomer delivery is not a side-effect of this role. It is the role.
• You ship a prototype, declare victory, and move onProduction hardening is the job. The prototype is the starting point.
• You have never had to explain a technical decision to someone who is paying for itThat moment is part of every delivery here. It is not optional.

The operating model

Small team, high trust, context over control. Real ownership from week one, and a weekly heartbeat everyone ships to.

We are genuinely excited about where this technology is going and we follow it because we want to. You will be expected to do the same — not because it is your job, but because that is the kind of people who work here.

We help write the rules of this category

• We co-authored DIN SPEC 91491, Europe’s first standard for AI-generated data structures, with Fraunhofer IIS, Humboldt-Innovation and DIN e.V. The standard is the credibility layer — in regulated enterprise, it opens doors.
• NVIDIA Inception member, with roots in research affiliated with Humboldt University of Berlin, and backed by leading European deep-tech investors.
• Production in regulated enterprise — energy utilities, pharma distribution, automotive, US logistics. Real problems, real customers, real data. You own named accounts from month one.

What we offer

• Location
  Berlin, hybrid.
• Base salary
  €80,000–€90,000 calibrated to experience.
• Equity
  Meaningful early-stage ownership.
• Holiday
  30 days.
• Scope
  Direct ownership of named enterprise accounts from month one. No ticket queue. No handoffs.

The process

No take-home algorithm puzzles. No five-round loop.

1. 30-minute call with Nikolas (CEO) or Holger (CTO). The role, the problem space, your questions. Come ready to talk about something you have built and the decisions you made.
2. Paid work sample. We agree on something real. You decide how to build it. You walk us through what you made and why you made it that way — not what the spec asked for, what you chose and why.
3. Offer.