Senior Forward Deployed Engineer

Why This Role Exists

Filevine is the operating system for legal work. Thousands of law firms and legal teams rely on us to run cases, manage documents, and automate operations. As we scale into new verticals and deepen our AI capabilities, we’re standing up a Forward Deployed Engineering function to own the technical success of our most complex and highest-value deployments.

This is a founding hire. You and one other FDE will define what this function looks like—the tooling, the playbooks, the standard of delivery. If you’ve been looking for a role where you can build something from scratch, operate with real autonomy, and work at the intersection of engineering and customer impact, this is it.

The Opportunity

In a given week, you might spin up a legacy database, prototype a migration pipeline, demo it to a customer’s IT team, then hand the tool off to product engineering for productization. You’ll move between codebases and conference calls, between SQL and stakeholder management. The work is varied, fast, and high-impact.

You’ll also be working at the frontier of AI in legal technology. Filevine is making significant investments in AI—from intelligent document analysis and AI-assisted drafting to agentic workflow automation. As an FDE, you’ll be among the first to deploy these capabilities into real customer environments, gathering signal that shapes the product roadmap.

What You'll Do:

Implementation Engineering

• Own the technical delivery of complex Filevine deployments end to end—scoping, configuration, migration, and go-live.

• Build repeatable frameworks and automation that reduce setup time by 30–50% and become the standard for future deployments.

• Partner with implementation managers to ensure every deployment ships on time, with clean data and a confident customer.

Data Migration & Tooling

• Develop scripts, APIs, and internal tools to automate migration workflows across legacy systems (SQL, Access, Clio, Time Matters, and others).

• Troubleshoot and optimize data pipelines, handling messy real-world data with care and precision.

• Prototype solutions fast, then collaborate with product engineering to harden them for production.

Customer Problem-Solving

• Serve as the senior technical point of contact during onboarding, escalations, and partner engagements.

• Engage directly with customers to resolve blockers, optimize configurations, and build trust in Filevine’s platform.

• Document patterns and share learnings across the organization to raise the bar on implementation quality globally.

Cross-Team Influence

• Provide structured feedback to product and engineering based on what you see in the field—your signal directly shapes the roadmap.
• Work closely with security, product, and partner teams to ensure deployments meet Filevine’s standards.
• Mentor partner engineers and internal specialists on best practices and deployment techniques.

What You Need:

5–7 years of experience in software implementation, solutions engineering, DevOps, or a similar hands-on technical role.

Strong proficiency in at least one of: data migration (ETL, SQL, Python/JavaScript), REST APIs and webhook integrations, or cloud platforms (AWS, Azure) and database management.

Demonstrated ability to work directly with enterprise clients or partners on technical delivery—you’re comfortable in the room.

Excellent communication and documentation skills. You translate between business context and technical detail naturally.

Strong ownership mindset, comfort with ambiguity, and the ability to context-switch between deep technical work and stakeholder conversations.

Bonus Points

Experience in legaltech, SaaS implementation, or system integration.

Familiarity with AI/ML tooling, LLM integrations, or automation frameworks.

You’ve built internal tools that other teams adopted and relied on.

What Success Looks Like

In your first year:

You’ve reduced average implementation setup time by 30–50% through smarter tooling and automation.

You’ve delivered production-ready prototypes that product engineering has adopted into the core platform.

You’ve created frameworks that other teams replicate—accelerating migrations, minimizing errors, and improving customer satisfaction.

You’re recognized internally and by customers as the person who bridges innovation with real-world delivery.

You’ve helped define the FDE function’s playbook, tooling standards, and operating rhythm from the ground up.

Why Filevine

Founding team energy: You’re not backfilling a role. You’re building a function. The playbooks, the tooling, the culture—that’s yours to shape.

AI-forward company: Filevine is investing heavily in AI across the platform. You’ll deploy cutting-edge capabilities before anyone else sees them.

Real autonomy: This isn’t a ticket queue. You own problems end to end, from discovery through delivery.

High-impact work: Every deployment you touch directly affects how a law firm operates. The feedback loop is immediate and tangible.

Growth trajectory: As the FDE function scales, early team members will have a natural path into senior IC, team lead, or cross-functional leadership roles.