Forward Deployed Engineer

Position: Forward Deployed Engineer (Delta)

Location: Boston, NYC, Washington DC (On-Site)

About Belisar

Belisar is the CRM designed for government contracting. It enables the best technology to win, fusing internal context, intuitive AI, and real-time data into a unified view of the market.

Federal contracting has long run on tools that were never built for it: Generic CRMs designed for commercial sales, legacy data platforms that surface noise instead of signal, and institutional knowledge locked in spreadsheets and inboxes. Belisar unifies all the important intelligence into a single, AI-native platform — so teams can see opportunities earlier, move faster, and win the work that matters.

Belisar is backed by a16z and trusted by leading defense, space, and government leaders including Boeing, Forterra, Scout AI, Vannevar Labs, Aevex, and the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU).

Together, we're building toward one outcome: The best technology wins, and it reaches the missions that need it most.

The Role

Forward Deployed Engineers at Belisar are the rare engineers who are equally at home in a terminal and in a customer briefing. You will live at the boundary between our product and the hardest operational problems in the federal ecosystem: understanding user needs, implementing product, connecting integrations, and writing code to deliver on the most important outcomes for a customer within the defense space.

FDEs are builders who also sit close to the customer, accelerating time-to-value for new deployments, and solving problems that no one has fully defined yet. We are looking for product-minded engineers who are energized by constraints, thrive under ambiguity, and find deep satisfaction in seeing their work create real-world impact, not just ship.

What You’ll Do

• Deploy and configure the Belisar platform in customer environments, including data ingestion pipelines, integrations, and custom workflow automation

• Write production-quality code (scripts, APIs, and lightweight applications) to extend platform capabilities and solve customer-specific problems

• Integrate Belisar with third-party data sources, government systems, and customer infrastructure

• Diagnose and resolve technical issues rapidly in the field, with limited access to core infrastructure or remote support

• Translate operational requirements from non-technical stakeholders into clean technical specifications and working software

• Build tooling, templates, and reusable components that accelerate future deployments

• Partner with the product engineering team to surface field-discovered bugs, feature gaps, and architecture feedback

• Own technical relationships with customer engineers, data teams, and IT/security leads

• Contribute to internal knowledge bases, deployment playbooks, and engineering documentation

What We’re Looking For

• 2+ years of software engineering / forward deployed engineering experience, with a strong foundation in at least one backend language (Python, Go, Java, or similar), at a top tier-startup, enterprise, or your own projects

• Hands-on experience deploying or integrating software in complex, real-world environments, not just greenfield development

• Fluency with data: SQL, ETL pipelines, REST APIs, and working with structured and unstructured data sources

• Strong debugging instincts and the ability to diagnose problems across the full stack, including infrastructure and networking layers

• A customer mindset: you understand that the best technical solution is the one that actually gets used

• Exceptional written and verbal communication: you can explain a complex system to a program manager and a junior analyst in the same conversation

• Experience working in or alongside the federal government, defense, or intelligence community is a strong plus

Qualifications

• Located in or willing to relocate to Washington DC. This is a fully on-site position.

• US Person required

• Veterans and those with military or intelligence community backgrounds strongly encouraged to apply

• Willingness for regular customer travel

Benefits

Belisar offers top-tier benefits for full-time employees, including:

• Competitive salary and meaningful equity

• Platinum healthcare: comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage fully covered for employees and dependents

• Basic Life/AD&D and long-term disability insurance fully covered, with the option to purchase additional life insurance for you and your dependents

• Relocation assistance available