Forward Deployed Engineer

About This Opportunity

We are representing a confidential optimization software client in the industrial technology sector. They are seeking a Forward Deployed Engineer to work directly with manufacturing and supply chain customers across the DACH region, building decision models that solve real operational problems.

This is a hands-on technical role based in Cologne, Germany. You will take complex planning challenges from customer discovery through to production deployment, owning the entire model lifecycle while working closely with plant managers, controllers, and operations teams.

Responsibilities

• Engage directly with customers to understand their planning and optimization problems, including capacity constraints, costs, lead times, and undocumented business rules
• Build production-grade decision models end-to-end using combinatorial optimization techniques for inventory management, scheduling, supply allocation, and order prioritization
• Own the complete technical implementation from initial customer conversations through production deployment and ongoing operation
• Work with messy, inconsistent industrial data from ERP systems and spreadsheets, transforming it into reliable model inputs
• Validate model outputs with stakeholders and iterate until results are trusted and acted upon by management
• Identify patterns across customer engagements and feed requirements back into the core platform roadmap
• Travel regularly to customer sites across the DACH region for critical meetings and workshops
• Write production-quality code that you deploy and maintain yourself

What We're Looking For

• Proven experience building quantitative models (optimization, simulation, or both) for real operations problems and deploying them to production environments
• Track record of end-to-end model delivery across multiple customer engagements, with at least one system still running autonomously
• Strong production-level Python programming skills with experience working within team code standards
• Ability to identify the critical assumptions and constraints that will determine model outcomes before building begins
• Comfortable presenting to and gathering requirements from senior business stakeholders including plant managers and financial controllers
• Experience working with messy industrial datasets and treating data cleaning as a core part of problem-solving
• Fluent in both German and English for customer meetings, specifications, and team collaboration
• Currently based in or willing to relocate to the Nordrhein-Westfalen region with Cologne office access
• Comfortable with regular business travel within the DACH region

Preferred additional experience: operations research background, optimization tooling (Gurobi, OR-Tools, Pyomo), production planning or supply chain domain knowledge, consulting or customer-facing technical roles, early-stage startup environment.

This role is not suitable if you: prefer to hand off implementation after design phase, would rather advise than own outcomes, view on-site customer work as an obstacle rather than a core responsibility, or prefer clearly defined task assignment over self-directed ownership.

How We Work With You

Candidates apply directly through the Get A Job.ai platform. Our talent team conducts an initial screening to understand your background and fit for the role. Qualified candidates are then submitted to our client for their consideration.

The client's process includes: a brief introductory call, a technical discussion, a hands-on three-hour challenge working with real planning data followed by a walkthrough of your solution, and finally team meetings both online and in person. The full process typically takes two to three weeks with prompt feedback after each stage.

Important: Please do not attempt to identify or contact the client directly. All communication and coordination will be managed through Get A Job.ai to ensure a professional process for all parties.

Pay

Compensation details will be discussed during the screening process with our recruiting team and are competitive for this level of expertise in the German market. The role also includes equity participation (VSOP), hardware of your choice, AI tooling budget, sports membership, and Deutschland-Ticket.

Get A Job.ai is an equal opportunity recruiter. We work with clients and candidates without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or veteran status.