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Thought Machine is building modern banking technology to replace legacy systems at banks worldwide. The Forward Deployed Engineer is the primary technical interface between Thought Machine and clients, embedding directly with client engineering teams to design, build, and deliver production-ready implementations of Vault and associated products.
This is a hands-on, generalist engineering role spanning backend development, systems integration, infrastructure, and technical consulting. You will own the technical success of assigned client engagements across the full project lifecycle—from requirements gathering through production deployment. You'll travel to client sites up to 25% of the time, work autonomously in complex environments, and serve as the connective tissue between Thought Machine's product engineering and client delivery teams.
Key responsibilities include:
- Embedding with client engineering teams on-site and remotely to deliver working implementations of Vault products from initial design through production readiness
- Owning technical success of assigned client engagements and acting as the technical point of contact, building trust through deep competence and consistent delivery
- Writing production-quality code (primarily Python/Go) to build integrations, tooling, data pipelines, and extensions connecting Vault to client ecosystems
- Debugging and resolving complex technical issues across distributed systems including databases, messaging systems, container orchestration, and cloud infrastructure
- Designing and delivering scalable solutions covering high availability, disaster recovery, capacity planning, and security
- Supporting the Commercial team during presales by answering technical questions, running proof-of-concept implementations, and demonstrating feasibility
- Serving as the voice of the client internally, channeling technical feedback and feature requests to product and engineering teams
- Identifying patterns across engagements that can be turned into product improvements, documentation, or shared tooling
Thought Machine has grown to over 550 employees across offices in London, New York, Singapore, Sydney, and Lisbon. The company has raised over £500m from investors including Molten Ventures, Eurazeo, JPMorgan Chase Strategic Investments, and Standard Chartered Ventures. Thought Machine has been recognized by Global Finance Magazine as one of the world's most innovative fintechs and by the Financial Times as one of Europe's fastest-growing companies.
REQUIREMENTS
Essential:
- Strong hands-on experience with Python or Go; comfortable working with ambiguous requirements to quickly iterate client ideas
- Working knowledge of Linux/Unix environments, container orchestration (Kubernetes), databases (PostgreSQL or equivalent), and messaging systems (Kafka or equivalent)
- Practical experience with at least one major cloud provider (AWS, GCP, or Azure), including deploying and operating workloads in production
- Demonstrated ability to work directly with external clients or partners in a technical delivery capacity; ability to explain complex systems to both engineers and non-technical stakeholders
- Experience delivering technical projects end-to-end, understanding what it takes to move from design to production including edge cases, rollback plans, and operability concerns
Desirable:
- Familiarity with retail banking, payments, ledgers, or regulatory environments; understanding of operational rigour expected in financial services
- Cloud architecture certifications (AWS Solutions Architect, GCP Professional Cloud Architect, Azure Solutions Architect Expert, or equivalent)
