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Preql helps enterprises clean, unify, and govern messy internal data for AI, analytics, and reporting. The company ships self-hosted software into regulated enterprises, where every deployment involves customer-managed Kubernetes clusters, identity providers, and security reviews.
As a Forward Deployed Engineer, you will own the complete deployment lifecycle of Preql in customer environments. This includes installation and configuration of Docker images and Helm charts across AWS, Azure, GCP, and on-premise Kubernetes clusters; networking, identity, and access setup (private connectivity, SSO/SAML, IAM, secrets management); and deployment architecture decisions tailored to each account's scope of work.
You will navigate complex customer IT environments to proactively identify and resolve blockers, manage enterprise security and compliance reviews (questionnaires, data residency requirements, architecture walkthroughs with security teams), and own production health monitoring, upgrades, and first-response incident response rather than escalating to product engineering. You will establish release discipline, versioning standards, and create runbooks and install automation that accelerate future deployments.
Success metrics: within 90 days, you run end-to-end installs independently and can walk customer security teams through architecture; at 6 months, install time drops measurably, all accounts run known versions, and new runbooks exist; at 12 months, deployment becomes a repeatable process and product engineers are no longer pulled into customer environments.
You bring 5+ years in infrastructure, platform, or DevOps engineering shipping to production environments outside your control. You have production Docker and Kubernetes experience, deep expertise in at least one major cloud (AWS, Azure, GCP), and working knowledge of the others. You understand enterprise networking and identity (VPCs, private connectivity, SSO/SAML, IAM, secrets management), CI/CD, observability, and incident response. You have high SQL and data infrastructure literacy and are comfortable working directly with customers—scoping, pushing back, and delivering difficult news early. You thrive in ambiguity and can write runbooks as you go.
Strong signals include experience packaging and shipping self-hosted or customer-managed software (not SaaS), carrying deployments through regulated buyers' security reviews, and familiarity with enterprise data infrastructure and finance systems.
