Forward Deployed Engineer

The role

Mission Architects help customers adopt and succeed on Northwood's ground station network. You will work with satellite operators to understand missions, shape requirements, and guide them from first conversation through deployment.

What you will do

• Make customer missions succeed on Northwood's network.
• Serve as the primary technical contact for customers during capture, evaluation, onboarding, and post-deployment.
• Work directly alongside customers and Engineering to bring up, troubleshoot, and validate operations on the network.
• Ship code, debug integrations, and validate operations alongside customers and Engineering.
• Support Business Development on qualification, proposals, and expansion.
• Lead technical discovery, exchanges, demos, and readiness reviews alongside Program Management.
• Learn each customer's mission, workflows, constraints, decision criteria, and success metrics in depth.
• Translate customer needs into clear priorities for Engineering, Product, and BD.
• Surface friction points, adoption blockers, and recurring needs that should shape the product and network.
• Coordinate onboarding and deployment readiness.

Required qualifications

• 7+ years in customer-facing technical roles: solutions or systems engineering, mission operations, technical business development, capture engineering, solutions architecture, or TAM.
• Bachelor's in EE, CE, CS, Aerospace, or related field — or equivalent experience with mission systems, ground systems, networking, cloud, or satellite operations.
• Track record taking complex customer engagements from discovery through deployment or expansion.
• Proven ability to build trust with technical customers and turn ambiguous mission needs into concrete priorities.
• Comfortable working in ambiguous environments spanning hardware, software, networking, and business objectives.
• Strong communicator — able to lead technical conversations, write clear customer materials, and brief internal stakeholders.
• Effective across BD, Engineering, Product, Program Management, and customer teams.
• Willing to travel up to 30%.
• Must be willing to work extended hours and weekends as needed.
• This role requires being on-site 5 days per week.

Nice to have

• Background in satellite communications, RF, space operations, ground stations, or telecom infrastructure.
• Experience with proposals, technical evaluations, demos, pilots, or proof-of-concept work.
• Experience managing technical relationships in mission-critical environments.
• Familiarity with APIs, networking protocols, telemetry, scheduling systems, cloud infrastructure, or mission assurance.
• Ability to obtain or hold TS/SCI clearance.

Before you apply

• Successfully obtaining and maintaining a Top Secret Security Clearance is a condition of employment.
• Must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident of the U.S., protected individual as defined in 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3), or eligible to obtain required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State.

About the company

Northwood is a modern space infrastructure company bringing the benefits of space to the masses through advanced communications technology. They build a global network of phased array and parabolic ground stations for satellite missions.