About this role
About the Role
We're hiring an Forward Deployed Engineer to be the vital link between our customers and our engineering teams — spanning the full customer journey from early technical evaluation through deployment, production ramp-up, and long-term success. You'll partner directly with customers to bring robotic systems online, troubleshoot in the field, and feed real-world insights back into our product roadmap.
This role is a rare blend of customer-facing, technical, and operational work, and it's a strong launchpad toward technical leadership or field engineering leadership as you grow with Chef.
What You'll Do
- Partner with Sales during early customer engagements to assess needs and evaluate technical feasibility
- Work closely with customer engineering and operations teams to understand workflows, constraints, and success metrics
- Configure, test, and validate robotic systems in lab environments, adapting solutions to real-world production requirements
- Own and project-manage deployments end-to-end, coordinating across internal engineering, manufacturing, and customer teams
- Lead on-site installations, including system setup, qualification testing, and production ramp
- Troubleshoot and resolve field issues spanning software, configuration, and hardware break/fix
- Support customers post-deployment to drive adoption, ensure success, and surface expansion opportunities
- Translate customer feedback into actionable input for Product and Engineering
Qualifications
- BS or MS in Robotics, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field
- Hands-on experience in robotics, automation systems, motion planning, perception, or controls
- Familiarity with Linux/Unix environments, ROS, and scripting in Python
Experience
- 2+ years in applications engineering, solutions engineering, field robotics, or another customer-facing technical role
- Track record operating independently in dynamic, real-world environments
Work Style & Logistics
- Strong communicator, comfortable working across technical and operational teams
- Highly organized, able to manage multiple concurrent projects and deployments
- Available for non-standard hours as needed (occasional nights, weekends, on-call)
- Able to travel up to 75% across North America for on-site deployments
Nice-to-Haves
- Experience in food production, manufacturing, or another regulated production environment
- Exposure to electrical/CAD debugging or hardware-level troubleshooting
- Experience with Linux/Unix environments, ROS, and scripting in Python
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