Hammerspace
Hammerspace

Forward Deployed Engineer

$200–240kDallas County, TXHybridSeniorFull-time

Posted yesterday

The role in short

Embed with strategic customers to design data architectures, build custom integrations, and optimize AI/HPC workloads on Hammerspace's global data environment.

Hammerspace is a fast-growing software company building the data foundation for the AI era. We are changing how organizations access, move, and use unstructured data by eliminating data silos and creating a single, high-performance data environment across sites, clouds, and storage systems—so AI, GPUs, HPC, and data-intensive applications can operate at full speed.

Our technology combines a high-performance parallel global file system with intelligent data orchestration to make data available wherever compute needs it, without disruptive migrations or infrastructure lock-in. The result is faster AI pipelines, higher GPU utilization, quicker time-to-insight, and a radically simpler way for researchers, developers, and enterprises to put their data to work.

About the Role

At Hammerspace, we believe that the most complex data challenges are solved where the code meets the mission. As a Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE), you are not a consultant or a support engineer—you are a technical founder in the field. You will be embedded directly within our most strategic Lighthouse accounts to solve "The Last Mile" problem, ensuring our Global Data Environment becomes the backbone of their AI and high-performance computing (HPC) workloads.

This is a high-leverage, hybrid role that requires the technical depth of a Software Engineer, the strategic mindset of a Solution Architect, and the tenacity of a Business Developer.

Responsibilities

  • Deep Customer Embedding: Act as the primary technical authority on-site, becoming an expert in the customer’s domain to identify and resolve real-world friction points before they escalate.
  • AI & Workload Optimization: Design and implement data architectures that accelerate AI/ML training pipelines, ensuring low-latency data access across hybrid-cloud environments.
  • The "Enhanced" Resident: Beyond standard maintenance, you will build custom integrations, automation scripts, and "last-mile" solutions that bridge the gap between Hammerspace’s core product and the client’s bespoke infrastructure.
  • Business Cultivation: Act as a "technical scout." Use your proximity to the action to identify new business problems, expansion opportunities, and emerging workloads that Hammerspace can solve.
  • Engineering Shield & Feedback Loop: Partner with our Rotational Sustaining Engineering team to translate field-discovered bugs into core product features, ensuring that local fixes become global platform strengths.
  • Stakeholder Management: Translate complex technical hurdles into clear, actionable insights for both end-users (data scientists/IT admins) and executive leadership.

Technical Qualifications

  • Infrastructure & AI Expertise: Deep understanding of GPU orchestration, AI/ML data pipelines, and high-performance file systems (NFS, SMB, S3) . Must also have NVIDIA or Mellanox experience
  • Principal-Level Networking: Mastery of high-speed networking (InfiniBand, RoCE, 100GbE+) and the ability to debug complex routing, latency, and throughput issues in a distributed environment.
  • Coding & Scripting: Proficiency in Python, Go, or C++, with the ability to write production-grade tools and integrations that interface with Hammerspace APIs.
  • Systems Knowledge: Strong Linux internals expertise, including kernel tuning, storage stack performance, and containerization (Kubernetes/Docker).
  • Hammerspace Stack: Ability to quickly master the Global Data Environment architecture and deploy it across heterogeneous storage and cloud providers.

Professional Attributes

  • Strategic Communicator: You can move seamlessly from a terminal window to a boardroom, explaining technical "why" to non-technical stakeholders.
  • Autonomous Problem Solver: You thrive in undefined, "high-stakes" environments where the solution isn't in a manual.
  • Opportunity Hunter: You have a "knack" for seeing the next big project before the customer does, working alongside the Named CSM to drive account growth.
  • Empathy-Driven: You understand that technical success is only half the battle; the other half is building trust and ensuring the customer feels supported.

This role is based in the Dallas Tx area. No exceptions. If you don't live in the Dallas area, and / or are not willing to relocate to Dallas, DO NOT APPLY.

The anticipated base salary range for this role is $200,000-240,000. Actual compensation will be determined by several factors including, but not limited to, level of professional/education experience, skills/abilities, internal equity, and budgetary considerations. In addition, Hammerspace offers a broad range of health plans for medical, dental, vision, life and disability. We also offer 401k plans and flexible time off.

Hammerspace is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, gender, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age, disability, military status, or national origin or any other characteristic protected under federal, state, or applicable local law.

Notice to Recruiters and Staffing Agencies:

Agencies are hereby specifically directed not to contact Hammerspace employees directly in an attempt to present candidates. To protect the interests of all parties, Hammerspace will not accept unsolicited resumes from any source other than directly from a candidate. Any unsolicited resumes sent to Hammerspace will be considered Hammerspace property. Hammerspace will not pay a fee for any placement resulting from the receipt of an unsolicited resume. Hammerspace will consider any candidate for whom an Agency has submitted an unsolicited resume to have been referred by the Agency free of any charges or fees.

Agency must obtain advance written approval from Hammerspace’s recruiting function to submit resumes, and then only in conjunction with a valid fully-executed contract for service and in response to a specific job opening. Hammerspace will not pay a fee to any Agency that does not have such agreement in place.

Prep for this interview

4 questions likely to come up at Hammerspace, each matched to a line in this posting.

  1. 1Integrations and APIs
    They wrote: “Coding & Scripting: Proficiency in Python, Go, or C++, with the ability to write production-grade tools and integrations that interface with Hammerspace APIs.”

    Walk me through connecting our product to a customer's internal system that has no documentation.

    How to answer

    Why they ask: This happens weekly in the job. They want a calm, step-by-step method.

    1. Find who owns the system and get read access to a test environment
    2. Watch real traffic or logs to learn the data shapes
    3. Build a thin adapter with logging around every call
    4. Agree on how failures get reported, and who fixes what

    Tip: Talk about finding the owner of the system first. The code is the easy part.

  2. 2Cloud, deployment and security
    They wrote: “Systems Knowledge: Strong Linux internals expertise, including kernel tuning, storage stack performance, and containerization (Kubernetes/Docker).”

    How would you debug a deployment that works in staging but fails at the customer's site?

    How to answer

    Why they ask: Customer environments differ in ways you can't see. This tests method under pressure.

    1. Compare versions, config and environment variables
    2. Check network rules, proxies and certificates (common in enterprise)
    3. Look at resource limits and permissions
    4. Add the missing check to your install steps afterwards

    Tip: List the usual suspects and how you'd check each without full access.

  3. 3Discovery and scoping
    They wrote: “Business Cultivation: Act as a "technical scout." Use your proximity to the action to identify new business problems, expansion opportunities, and emerging workloads that Hammerspace can solve.”

    A customer says “we want AI in our claims process.” What do you ask in the first meeting?

    How to answer

    Why they ask: Most FDE work starts this vague. They want to hear you find the real problem before you pick a tool.

    1. Map the current process: who touches a claim, in what order, with which systems
    2. Find the slowest or most error-prone step and ask what it costs them
    3. Agree on one measurable goal (for example time per claim, or error rate)
    4. Ask what data you can access, and who signs off on security

    Tip: Ask about the work, not the technology. Who does it today, how long it takes, what a mistake costs, and how they'd know it got better.

  4. 4Data and SQL
    They wrote: “Infrastructure & AI Expertise: Deep understanding of GPU orchestration, AI/ML data pipelines, and high-performance file systems (NFS, SMB, S3) . Must also have NVIDIA or Mellanox experience”

    How would you design a daily pipeline that feeds customer data into our product?

    How to answer

    Why they ask: Tests basic data engineering: scheduling, failures, re-runs and monitoring.

    1. Extract with timestamps or change tracking, not full dumps, when possible
    2. Transform in steps you can re-run without creating duplicates
    3. Validate row counts and key fields before loading
    4. Alert a person on failure, with enough detail to fix it

    Tip: Make re-running safe (same input, same result) and say how you'd know it failed.

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Hammerspace

$200–240k · Hybrid

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