Staff Forward Deployed Engineer

Alation is pioneering the next era of data intelligence — powered by AI agents and trusted data. Organizations around the world rely on Alation to drive self-service analytics, cloud transformation, data governance, and AI innovation. Our technology helps enterprises connect people and data to make faster, smarter, and more confident decisions. With more than $340M in funding – valued at over $1.7 billion and more than 650 customers, including 40% of the Fortune 100.

As data becomes the foundation of every business, Alation is leading the way in helping organizations unlock their full potential. By bringing intelligence, automation, and trust to every interaction, we empower customers to scale data-driven innovation with confidence and speed.

Joining Alation means being part of a winning team shaping the future of AI-powered data intelligence. We move fast, think big, and deliver results together.

Job Description:

As a Staff Forward Deployed Engineer, you will work at the intersection of technical delivery and customer impact, turning complex enterprise problems into working, AI-driven solutions within Alation's platform.

You will serve as a key technical resource for strategic enterprise customers, partnering closely with Deployment Strategists and Account Executives to ensure Alation implementations deliver real, measurable business value. You bring advanced experience in data platforms, AI technologies, and enterprise architecture, and you apply that expertise with independence and sound judgment across complex, multi-stakeholder engagements.

This is an individual contributor role within the Forward Deployed Engineering organization, with strong cross-functional collaboration across field, Product, and GTM teams.

What You'll Do

• Design and prototype AI agent systems and agentic workflows that automate data governance processes and complex reasoning tasks within Alation's platform.

• Engage directly with enterprise stakeholders to understand their data ecosystems and governance challenges, translating requirements into technical roadmaps tied to Alation's Knowledge Layer capabilities.

• Build BI and ML pipelines that convert cataloged data into actionable insights, demonstrating clear ROI for Alation deployments.

• Partner with Deployment Strategists to connect technical work to business outcomes, ensuring engagements are scoped and delivered against customer value metrics.

• Contribute to repeatable solution patterns and internal tooling, including accelerators and reusable components, that improve delivery consistency across the FDE team.

• Feed real-world customer patterns, edge cases, and AI use cases back to Product and Engineering to inform the core platform roadmap.

• Support competitive analysis in the field and surface observations from customer environments to GTM and Product teams.

• Provide technical guidance and mentorship to junior field engineers and customer technical teams on Alation architecture and AI best practices.

What You Bring

• 8+ years in software engineering, with meaningful experience in customer-facing technical roles such as Solutions Engineer, FDE, or similar.

• Hands-on experience with LLM frameworks and AI tooling, including familiarity with orchestration patterns, vector databases, and RAG architectures.

• Experience delivering BI and data pipeline solutions, with strong SQL skills and familiarity with cloud data platforms such as Snowflake, Databricks, AWS, GCP, or Azure.

• Solid understanding of enterprise data governance, metadata management, and distributed systems architecture.

• A builder's mindset: comfortable moving quickly from ambiguous requirements to working prototypes, iterating based on customer feedback.

• Strong communication skills with the ability to engage both technical and business stakeholders and translate complex concepts into clear, actionable terms.

• Genuine enthusiasm for Alation's mission and a drive to help customers achieve maximum value from their data investments.

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Compensation Pay Range listed below is target base salary. This role includes variable compensation as a 75/25 split. On-target-earning (OTE) is specific to the US and is ~$167,000 - $227,000.Compensation Pay Range:

$124,646.00 - $168,272.00

Salary Information

The base salary range is specific to the United States. The salary of the final candidate selected for this role will be set based on a variety of factors, including but not limited to internal equity, experience, education, work location, specialty and training. If the final candidate has a different level of experience, the base salary target range may be lower or higher than what is published.

Alation, Inc. is an Equal Employment Opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regards to that individual’s race, color, religion or creed, national origin or ancestry, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, gender identity, age, physical or mental disability, veteran status, genetic information, ethnicity, citizenship, or any other characteristic protected by law.

The Company will strive to provide reasonable accommodations to permit qualified applicants who have a need for an accommodation to participate in the hiring process (e.g., accommodations for a job interview) if so requested.

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