Staff Forward Deployed Engineer
Edera
Seattle, WA, USA
USD 200k-225k / year
About the Role:
As a Staff Forward Deployed Engineer at Edera, you'll be the technical heart of our customer relationships — embedded with strategic customers to ensure they get maximum value from our platform. You'll operate at the intersection of engineering and customer success, working with platform and infrastructure teams who are building and scaling Kubernetes platforms for the long haul. You'll translate complex security and scale requirements into real solutions while feeding hard-won field insights back into the product. This isn't a typical post-sales role: you'll write code, architect solutions, and go deep on Kubernetes internals alongside the people who rely on Edera every day.
Key Responsibilities
Partner with strategic customers during onboarding and beyond, becoming their trusted technical advisor for all things Edera
Work hands-on with platform engineering teams building and scaling Kubernetes platforms — understanding their architecture, operational challenges, and growth trajectory
Understand customer environments (multi-cluster Kubernetes, cloud infrastructure, security posture) and design tailored deployment and integration solutions that hold up at scale
Write scripts, tooling, and integrations to accelerate customer time-to-value and solve environment-specific challenges
Help customers design secure, scalable platform architectures that grow with their business — not just solve today's problem
Serve as the voice of the customer internally — document patterns, pain points, and feature gaps and advocate for them with the product and engineering teams
Lead technical workshops, architecture reviews, and training sessions with customer security and platform engineering teams
Collaborate with sales on pre-sales technical evaluations and proof-of-concept deployments
Contribute to internal tooling, documentation, and playbooks that scale the FDE practice
Qualifications
10+ years of experience in a customer-facing technical role (forward deployed engineer, solutions engineer, professional services, or similar)
Proven experience building or operating Kubernetes platforms at scale — multi-cluster, multi-tenant, or large fleet environments
Deep hands-on experience with Kubernetes — ideally multi-cluster environments, RBAC, and workload security
Comfortable reading and writing code (Go, Python, Bash, or similar) to build integrations and automate workflows
Strong understanding of cloud-native security concepts — container security, runtime threat detection, policy enforcement, supply chain security
Experience advising or partnering with platform engineering teams on infrastructure design, scaling strategies, and operational best practices
Excellent communicator who can explain complex technical concepts to both practitioners and executives
Self-directed and comfortable with ambiguity in an early-stage startup environment
Experience with Linux systems internals is a strong plus
Prior experience at a security or infrastructure startup is a strong plus
Why Edera?
Make secure computing simple. Many believe that truly securing computing is an impossible undertaking. We don't. The products and innovations we release on the way to that end will change everything. We're just getting started. Come believe with us.
We operate as a team and exhibit these values and priorities when working together:
Embrace your whole self - We meet each other with humility, curiosity, and authenticity, embracing difficult challenges with courage and dedication to our mission, our humanity, and each other.
We don’t just talk the talk, we walk the walk, together - Diversity is critical to our survival. We value diversity in all its forms, understanding that different perspectives drive our success and those in our community should feel confident in sharing and showing up as their complete selves.
We’ve got your back, for real - We prioritize honest, sincere communication and foster a culture of active gratitude, dignity, and empowerment, where everyone feels safe to contribute and innovate. We believe psychological safety is instrumental in supporting an innovative and successful company and community.
Master your craft, honor your limits - We believe in continuous learning and growth, supporting each other to outfail the competition without fostering a hero culture, relying on teamwork and empathy. We recognize that work is just one part of our lives and celebrate striving toward growth in all areas of life.
We don’t just dream it, we do it - We are dedicated to our mission and are not afraid to tackle difficult challenges, whether in our work, products, or team dynamics.
200000 - 225000 USD a year
