Forward Deployed Engineer
Posted 3 days ago
The role in short
Embeds full-time with a semiconductor customer to build and deploy AI/data tooling inside their test and validation workflows.
Summary:
We are seeking a capable and experienced Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) to join our Semiconductor team. This role will work onsite with strategic semiconductor customers, shipping AI and software solutions that run inside their engineering and test workflows. The selected candidate will work shoulder to shoulder with the customer’s design, validation, characterization, test and product teams to turn real engineering pain points into working solutions.
The ideal candidate will be a hands-on software engineer and technical consultant with strong experience building production software using generative AI, complemented by a working understanding of the semiconductor lifecycle. The role requires ownership, technical depth, clarity in communication, and the ability to deploy and debug in complex, secured customer environments.
Position Overview:
The Forward Deployed Engineer – Semiconductor will embed full-time with a strategic semiconductor customer and own the end-to-end solution journey, from discovery and problem framing to architecture, development, field deployment and iteration. The role will coordinate closely with customer engineers and managers across design, post-silicon validation, characterization, ATE/production test, applications and product engineering. The position will also drive measurable outcomes such as cycle time saved, yield insight gained and manual effort removed through rapid, feedback-driven iteration.
Key Responsibilities:
Customer Embedding - Work onsite with semiconductor engineering teams across design, post-silicon validation, characterization, ATE/production test, applications and product engineering.
Problem Framing - Run discovery with engineers and managers and map their workflows. Turn loosely defined pain points into scoped, measurable use cases.
Solution Architecture - Design solutions that fit the customer’s infrastructure, security rules and tool chain. Make and communicate the key technical trade-offs.
Production-Grade Development - Build data pipelines for test and lab data (STDF, bench logs, wafer/lot data). Develop API and tool integrations, and AI/LLM and agentic workflows.
Field Deployment & Debugging - Get solutions running on customer servers, lab machines and clouds. Troubleshoot in live environments with instruments, test systems and EDA/PLM tools.
Rapid Iteration & Outcome Delivery - Ship early versions in weeks and gather field feedback. Improve continuously until the outcome is proven — cycle time saved, yield insight gained, manual effort removed.
Qualifications:
BE/BTech/MS in Computer Science, Electrical/Electronics Engineering or a related field.
5+ years of experience building and shipping production software, including 2+ years in semiconductor, test & measurement or hardware-adjacent engineering.
Strong Python experience.
Hands-on experience with data pipelines, REST/gRPC APIs, databases, and MLOps or LLM/AI application workflows.
Working understanding of the semiconductor lifecycle — design, bring-up, validation, characterization, production test — and the data each stage produces.
Comfort deploying and debugging onsite in complex, secured enterprise and lab environments.
Clear communicator who can translate engineering needs into architecture and explain trade-offs to engineers and managers alike.
Willingness to work full-time at customer sites and travel as engagements require.
Good to Have Skills:
Familiarity with semiconductor test data formats (STDF), wafer/lot data and yield analysis.
Exposure to lab instruments, ATE/test systems and EDA/PLM tool chains.
Experience building LLM-based or agentic applications in production.
Consulting or customer-facing engineering experience, with the ability to manage stakeholder expectations.
Proactive, outcome-driven, and comfortable working with ambiguity in a fast-paced environment.
Benefits:
We want every Soliton member to grow to their highest potential. Our work environment helps individuals explore their interests and potential and reach out to the resources and people available at Soliton to realize them. Read more about what it’s like to work at Soliton Careers | Soliton Technologies
Solitons choose their work hours as long as it takes into account the requirements of the job. We take special care to support mothers to excel at work while they handle their responsibilities at home.
At Soliton, we believe that every team member contributes to our success and revenue, directly or indirectly. To recognize this, we share a portion of our profits with all Solitons. Starting from your second year with us, you’ll be eligible to receive a share of the company’s profits.
Health insurance for employees - your health is a priority!
About Soliton:
Soliton Technologies Pvt. Ltd., a high-technology software company headquartered in Bangalore, India.
Soliton works with global companies, from start-ups to Fortune 500, across industries including Semiconductors, Medical Devices, Automotive, Industry 4.0, and Robotics to help them increase their competitiveness and release great products through Software Engineering Services. Since 1997, we have been growing over 25% annually because we especially focus on raising our standards constantly, to deliver an excellent experience to both our customers and our employees.
Soliton Technologies is a certified Great Place to Work® in the Mid-Sized Organizations Category, recognized and issued by the Great Place to Work® Institute. This certification is a testament to our focus on our values of Respect, Integrity, Excellence, and Innovation.
With a team of over 400 employees across the world, we forge ahead as engineers working to our heart’s content, moving humanity forward.
Additional Details:
Work Location (US - San Jose and Dallas): This role is customer-embedded and requires working 4–5 days a week at the client site. Also we are looking for candidates with active US work visa/US residents.
Employment Type: Full-time.
For more information, visit https://www.solitontech.com/ and do read the Impact Report to get a glimpse of the first 25 years of our truly meaningful journey.
Prep for this interview
5 questions likely to come up at Soliton Technologies, each matched to a line in this posting.
- 1Integrations and APIs
They wrote: “Production-Grade Development - Build data pipelines for test and lab data (STDF, bench logs, wafer/lot data). Develop API and tool integrations, and AI/LLM and agentic workflows.”
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.
- 2LLMs, RAG and agents
They wrote: “Experience building LLM-based or agentic applications in production.”
When would you use an agent that takes actions, and how do you keep it safe?
How to answer
Why they ask: Agent work is growing fast in FDE postings. Senior candidates are expected to know where agents fail.
- Use agents for multi-step tasks with clear success checks; avoid them where one wrong action is costly
- Give the agent narrow tools and permissions, not broad access
- Require human approval for risky actions
- Log every step so the customer can audit it
Tip: Start from the cost of a wrong action. Limit what the agent can do, and log everything.
- 3Travel
They wrote: “Willingness to work full-time at customer sites and travel as engagements require.”
How do you handle being on the road with customers for weeks at a time?
How to answer
Why they ask: Many FDE roles involve regular travel. They check you know what you're signing up for.
- Your past travel or on-site experience
- How you stay productive away from the team
- What travel level works for you, said plainly
Tip: Be honest about what works for you. A mismatch here hurts both sides later.
- 4Discovery and scoping
They wrote: “Problem Framing - Run discovery with engineers and managers and map their workflows. Turn loosely defined pain points into scoped, measurable use cases.”
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.
- Map the current process: who touches a claim, in what order, with which systems
- Find the slowest or most error-prone step and ask what it costs them
- Agree on one measurable goal (for example time per claim, or error rate)
- 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.
- 5Data and SQL
They wrote: “Hands-on experience with data pipelines, REST/gRPC APIs, databases, and MLOps or LLM/AI application workflows.”
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.
- Extract with timestamps or change tracking, not full dumps, when possible
- Transform in steps you can re-run without creating duplicates
- Validate row counts and key fields before loading
- 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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