Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) – Ascend Engineering Foundation (AEF)

Description:

Position Summary

The Ascend Engineering Foundation (AEF) team is seeking a highly technical and customer-focused Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) to partner with engineering teams across Deloitte and accelerate the adoption of AEF capabilities. The FDE acts as the bridge between product, platform, and engineering teams, helping onboard applications, implement engineering best practices, resolve platform integration challenges, and ensure teams successfully leverage AEF's standardized toolchain, automation, AI capabilities, and cloud services. AEF's mission is to increase productivity, collaboration, consistency, code reuse, and software quality through a unified engineering ecosystem.

Key Responsibilities

Customer & Engineering Engagement

• Serve as the primary technical advisor for teams onboarding to AEF.
• Conduct technical discovery sessions to understand team requirements and architecture.
• Guide teams through AEF onboarding, application registration, toolchain adoption, and platform integration.
• Partner with engineering leaders, architects, product managers, and developers to drive successful outcomes.

Solution Implementation

• Assist teams in implementing AEF-approved development patterns and engineering standards.
• Enable onboarding to GitHub, CI/CD pipelines, Artifactory, cloud environments, App Store, Agent Registry, and other AEF services.
• Support integration of AI, agent, and platform services into customer applications where applicable.
• Help teams accelerate development through reusable templates, accelerators, and automation provided by AEF.

Platform Adoption & Enablement

• Drive adoption of AEF capabilities across asset and product teams.
• Deliver workshops, onboarding sessions, office hours, and technical demonstrations.
• Create implementation guides, reference architectures, FAQs, and knowledge articles.
• Identify onboarding bottlenecks and recommend improvements to the AEF platform and processes.
• Write production-quality code, scripts, services, pipelines, or glue integrations — tailored to the consuming team's environment and constraints
• Debug issues that span the boundary between platform internals and consumer-side systems
• Build lightweight tooling or automation to reduce repeat friction across similar engagements

Technical Problem Solving

• Troubleshoot onboarding, infrastructure, DevOps, cloud, and deployment-related issues.
• Work closely with product and engineering teams to escalate and resolve platform gaps.
• Participate in root cause analysis and continuous improvement efforts.

Feedback & Product Influence

• Gather customer feedback and usage insights to help shape the AEF roadmap.
• Advocate for engineering teams by translating customer pain points into actionable product requirements.
• Collaborate with product managers and architects to prioritize enhancements and new capabilities.

Communication & stakeholder management

• Act as the primary technical point of contact for assigned engagements
• Set realistic expectations with stakeholders on scope, timeline, and platform constraints
• Communicate technical tradeoffs clearly to both engineering and non-engineering stakeholders

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology, or related field.
• 5+ years of software engineering, platform engineering, DevOps, cloud engineering, or solution architecture experience.
• Strong experience in modern software development practices and lifecycle management.
• Experience with:
• GitHub Enterprise
• CI/CD pipelines
• Containerization (Docker)
• Kubernetes
• Cloud platforms (Azure, AWS, or GCP)
• Infrastructure as Code (Terraform preferred)
• APIs and microservices architecture
• Strong problem-solving and troubleshooting capabilities.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills.
• Ability to work directly with product teams and senior engineering stakeholders.