Forward Deployed Engineer, Japan
Posted Aug 14, 2026
The role in short
Embed with strategic clients to design and ship production-grade code and integrations that solve high-stakes economic security and compliance challenges.
About Sayari:
Sayari is the judgment infrastructure for trustworthy AI in economic security and commercial risk. The Sayari Commercial World Model resolves 11.7B+ primary-source records from 250+ jurisdictions forming the ground truth of global commerce. A Judgment Ontology, encoding over a decade of investigative tradecraft, and Superconductor, an agentic orchestration platform, deliver AI that reasons like an expert analyst, shows its work, and traces every finding to its source. Trusted by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, HM Revenue & Customs, and Fortune 500 enterprises, Sayari is used by thousands of professionals across 35+ countries to secure supply chains and dismantle illicit networks. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., with offices in London, Singapore, Tokyo, and Tel Aviv.
POSITION DESCRIPTION
This is not a traditional sales engineering or software development role. As a Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE), you are at the critical intersection of our code, our clients, and their most critical missions. You will be deployed to our most strategic partners, embedding within their environments to solve high-stakes problems that have no textbook answers.
You own the "last mile" of our product's impact , ensuring our technology fundamentally transforms how our users confront challenges such as financial crime, supply chain disruption, and threats to national security.
You are equal parts engineer, strategist, and operator. One day you might be architecting a data pipeline within a client's cloud environment ; the next, you'll be writing production Python to integrate our API into a proprietary analytics platform ; and by the end of the week, you could be briefing a C-level executive, intelligence analyst, or mission director on the outcomes your work has enabled.
You thrive on ambiguity, operate with extreme ownership, and are relentless in your pursuit of delivering real-world value. You will act as a vital conduit between the front lines and our core engineering teams, turning your bespoke solutions into scalable, platform-wide features of Sayari’s product suite.
JOB RESPONSIBILITIES
- Embed and Build: Deploy directly into our clients' technical ecosystems and work with key stakeholders to understand their unique workflows, technical environments, and mission challenges. Design, build, and ship production-grade code. You will write robust Python applications, advanced SQL, and leverage our APIs to solve bespoke challenges at the edge.
- Own the Outcome: Lead the entire technical lifecycle of our most strategic deployments, from initial discovery and architectural design to implementation and operationalization. You are responsible for ensuring our platform delivers tangible, mission-critical value.
- Be the Tip of the Spear: Serve as the primary technical authority for our clients. You'll lead deep-dive technical workshops, debug complex systems, and act as a trusted, hands-on advisor on how to best leverage Sayari's platform to achieve their objectives in real-world investigations and missions.
- Engineer Solutions for the Mission: Deconstruct ambiguous, high-level mission requirements into concrete technical solutions. Architect and implement scalable data models and workflows, ranging from building robust data pipelines into client persistence layers (Snowflake, Databricks, etc.) to developing custom Python scripts and prototyping AI/ML models.
- Shape Our Product: Act as the vital conduit between the front lines and our core engineering teams. You will translate complex, real-world operational needs and feedback into the next generation of Sayari's platform.
SKILLS & EXPERIENCE
Required:
- 5+ years of experience in a client-facing, technical role (Forward Deployed Engineer, Sales Engineering, Solutions Architecture, Technical Consulting, etc.).
- Demonstrated ability to write clean, production-ready code, with strong proficiency in programming languages (preferably Python) and its data manipulation ecosystem (Pandas, etc.).
- Deep fluency in writing and optimizing complex SQL queries.
- Hands-on, practical experience consuming, integrating, and reasoning about RESTful APIs.
- Professional working fluency with both Japanese and English
- Strong communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to bridge the gap between code and mission. You can articulate highly technical concepts with clarity and conviction to engineers, analysts, and senior leaders alike.
- Excellent problem-solving skills and the ability to navigate ambiguous, complex scenarios.
- A relentless drive and intellectual curiosity. You are comfortable parachuting into new environments and learning new technologies on the fly.
- Bachelor's or Master's degree in a technical field strongly preferred
Desired:
- Practical experience leveraging AI, including prompting Large Language Models (LLMs) or using their APIs to build analytical solutions.
- Experience building and deploying solutions on cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure) and familiarity with containerization (Docker, Kubernetes).
- Familiarity with the modern data stack (e.g., Snowflake, Databricks) and workflow orchestrators (e.g., Airflow, Prefect).
- Knowledge of graph data technologies (Neo4j, TigerGraph) and their corresponding query languages.
- Exposure to machine learning applications, particularly in NLP or entity resolution.
- Experience in, or a demonstrated passion for, high-stakes domains such as AML/Financial Crime, Supply Chain Risk, or National Security.
- Ability to travel up to 30%
The target base salary for this position is ¥15,150,000 to ¥16,150,000 plus commission and equity. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors including location, local market variances, candidate experience and expertise, internal peer equity, and may vary from the amounts listed above.
Benefits:
- 100% fully paid medical, vision, and dental for employees and their dependents
- Generous time off; we close our office for a winter break (12/24-12/31), in addition to granting 18 PTO days and 10 sick days
- Outstanding compensation package; competitive commissions for revenue roles and bonuses for non-revenue positions
- A strong commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion
- A collaborative and positive culture - your team will be as smart and driven as you
- Limitless growth and learning opportunities
Pay Range
¥15,150,000—¥16,150,000 JPY
Prep for this interview
5 questions likely to come up at Sayari, each matched to a line in this posting.
- 1Cloud, deployment and security
They wrote: “Experience building and deploying solutions on cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure) and familiarity with containerization (Docker, Kubernetes).”
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.
- Compare versions, config and environment variables
- Check network rules, proxies and certificates (common in enterprise)
- Look at resource limits and permissions
- Add the missing check to your install steps afterwards
Tip: List the usual suspects and how you'd check each without full access.
- 2LLMs, RAG and agents
They wrote: “Practical experience leveraging AI, including prompting Large Language Models (LLMs) or using their APIs to build analytical solutions.”
When would you fine-tune a model, and when is prompting or retrieval enough?
How to answer
Why they ask: Customers often ask for fine-tuning first. They want to hear you pick the cheapest thing that works.
- Try clear prompts and examples first; measure against a test set
- If the model lacks the customer's facts, add retrieval
- Fine-tune when you need a format or behaviour prompts can't hold, and you have good examples
- Count the cost: training data, upkeep and re-testing on every model update
Tip: Start from what's wrong: missing knowledge points to retrieval, wrong style or format points to fine-tuning.
- 3Integrations and APIs
They wrote: “Hands-on, practical experience consuming, integrating, and reasoning about RESTful 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.
- Find who owns the system and get read access to a test environment
- Watch real traffic or logs to learn the data shapes
- Build a thin adapter with logging around every call
- 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.
- 4Data and SQL
They wrote: “Deep fluency in writing and optimizing complex SQL queries.”
Write a query that finds each customer's first and most recent order.
How to answer
Why they ask: A quick check that you're comfortable with grouping, joins and window functions.
- Clarify the tables and what counts as an order (cancelled ones?)
- Use MIN/MAX with GROUP BY, or ROW_NUMBER() if you need the whole row
- Handle ties on the same timestamp, and customers with no orders
- Explain how you'd test it on a few known customers
Tip: Say what you'd check in the data before writing the query: duplicates, time zones, nulls.
- 5Coding
They wrote: “Demonstrated ability to write clean, production-ready code, with strong proficiency in programming languages (preferably Python) and its data manipulation ecosystem (Pandas, etc.).”
Here's a CSV export from a customer. Write a script that cleans it and loads it into our API.
How to answer
Why they ask: Very close to real FDE work. They watch how you handle bad rows and failures.
- Read with a proper CSV parser; check the header first
- Validate each row and collect errors, not crash on the first one
- Send in batches with retries and a clear report at the end
- Write one or two quick tests for the parsing
Tip: Talk through edge cases out loud: encodings, missing fields, duplicates, rate limits.
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