Forward Deployed Engineer

Manchester, GB
Cloud & Infrastructure
Full-Time

Role introduction

Forward Deployed Engineer

About HSO

HSO is a global Business Transformation Partner with deep industry expertise and a long standing strategic relationship with Microsoft. We help organisations unlock the full potential of Microsoft Dynamics 365, Azure, Data and AI technologies to modernise operations, accelerate innovation and deliver meaningful business outcomes.

In 2026, HSO achieved Microsoft Frontier Partner status, recognising our advanced capabilities across Microsoft Cloud and AI and our ability to help customers move beyond AI experimentation into secure, governed, enterprise scale production.

With operations across Europe, North America and Asia, we combine industry knowledge, technical excellence and a practical, people first approach to transformation.

As we continue to expand our AI capabilities, we’re building a new generation of customer facing engineering talent to help organisations turn the potential of AI and agentic technologies into real, measurable value.

About the Role

HSO is building a new generation of customer facing engineers who will help our customers create the operating model of the future using the latest AI, data and cloud capabilities.

Forward Deployed Engineers combine consulting judgement, production software engineering, data platform expertise, AI delivery capability and business transformation skills.

You will embed with strategic customers, understand their most important business challenges and rapidly turn those challenges into working, production ready AI applications, agentic workflows, automation solutions and data driven platforms.

This is a hands on, outcome led role embedded within customer environments. You’ll move quickly from discovery to working software and take accountability for delivering measurable business outcomes.

You’ll work across business processes, data platforms, integrations, AI, cloud and security, designing solutions that make effective use of Microsoft technologies while integrating with the customer’s wider technology estate.

A strong understanding of modern enterprise data platforms is fundamental to the role. You will need to understand how data is structured, governed, integrated, transformed and made available to AI and application workloads, and how data platform decisions affect the quality, scalability and reliability of the solutions you build.

Forward Deployed Engineers work closely with Deployment Strategists. The Deployment Strategist focuses on identifying where AI can create the greatest customer value and defining the desired outcome. The FDE takes ownership of how that outcome is delivered technically.

From discovery through to go live, both roles work side by side. The FDE owns the technical solution and delivery, while the Deployment Strategist ensures the solution remains aligned to the business problem and measurable value.

The role does not end at first deployment. You’ll stay close to solutions through hardening, adoption and handover before moving on to the next value opportunity. You’ll also turn what you learn into reusable HSO assets, reference architectures and delivery patterns that help future engagements move faster.

What You’ll Do

Own Customer Outcomes

• Embed rapidly within customer teams and develop a strong understanding of their priorities, operating processes, systems, data and constraints.

• Translate ambiguous business problems and defined customer outcomes into clear technical delivery plans.

• Act as the technical lead throughout an engagement, guiding customer sponsors, business users, technical teams and HSO colleagues towards successful delivery.

• Build trusted relationships with senior operational and technical stakeholders, including CTO and CIO level leaders.

• Take ownership for delivering solutions that create measurable customer value rather than simply completing technical tasks.

Lead Discovery and Solution Design

• Lead technical discovery workshops to understand customer challenges and identify high value AI, data and automation opportunities.

• Assess business processes, data readiness, data architecture, integration points, security requirements, technical risks and operational constraints.

• Understand the customer’s existing data platform landscape and identify how data needs to be accessed, transformed, governed or modernised to support the required solution.

• Apply a problem first approach to identify the smallest valuable solution that can be built and proven quickly.

• Design end to end solution architectures that balance speed, scalability, maintainability, security and responsible AI.

• Turn discovery into a pragmatic roadmap from prototype through to production.

Build and Ship Production Solutions

• Design, build, integrate, test and deploy enterprise grade solutions using modern cloud, data and AI technologies.

• Develop AI powered applications, copilots, agents, automations, integrations and workflow solutions.

• Build solutions that make effective use of modern enterprise data platforms and ensure AI applications are supported by reliable, governed and accessible data.

• Integrate solutions with platforms such as Microsoft Fabric, Azure Data Services, Dynamics 365, Power Platform, Salesforce, SAP, ServiceNow and customer owned systems, APIs and data platforms.

• Apply modern engineering practices including source control, CI/CD, automated testing, infrastructure as code, observability and secure development.

• Work iteratively. Deliver value quickly, learn from real world usage and progressively harden solutions for enterprise production.

Engineer AI and Agentic Solutions

• Design and implement robust agentic workflows, human in the loop processes and, where appropriate, multi agent architectures.

• Apply modern techniques across retrieval, grounding, orchestration, tool integration, context engineering and evaluation.

• Build evaluation frameworks and guardrails to test AI behaviour, reliability and quality before and after deployment.

• Implement appropriate responsible AI, security, monitoring and governance controls.

• Ensure data quality, lineage, governance and availability are considered as fundamental components of AI solution design.

• Use operational data and user feedback to continuously improve solution quality and performance.

Create Reusable HSO Capability

• Reuse existing HSO assets, accelerators and delivery patterns wherever they improve speed and quality.

• Turn lessons from customer engagements into reusable assets, reference architectures, engineering patterns and playbooks.

• Contribute actively to HSO’s AI, Data, Frontier and Horizon engineering communities.

• Share practical knowledge across regions, practices and delivery teams.

• Support and mentor other engineers as the Forward Deployed Engineering capability grows.

What We’re Looking For

We’re looking for experienced engineers who combine strong technical depth with commercial awareness and the ability to operate confidently with customers.

You’ll ideally bring:

• Significant experience across software engineering, cloud engineering, data engineering, solution development, technical consulting or enterprise technology delivery, with senior level ownership of complex solutions.

• Strong hands on experience building and operating production grade solutions on at least one major cloud platform.

• Strong understanding and practical experience of modern enterprise data platforms, including data architecture, integration, transformation, governance and the role data plays in enabling AI and application workloads.

• Experience with Microsoft data technologies such as Microsoft Fabric, Azure Data Factory, Azure Synapse, Azure Databricks, OneLake or comparable enterprise data platforms would be highly valuable.

• Excellent coding capability in a modern language such as Python, C#, TypeScript, JavaScript or Java, with a track record of producing maintainable, production quality software.

• Practical experience designing, building and deploying AI powered applications using platforms such as Azure AI, OpenAI, AWS Bedrock, Google Vertex AI, Anthropic or comparable technologies.

• Hands on experience with large language models, prompting, retrieval augmented generation, evaluation and agent orchestration.

• Strong understanding of APIs, integrations, data platforms and modern distributed application architectures.

• Experience with modern engineering and DevOps practices including CI/CD, automated testing, source control and infrastructure as code.

• Strong customer facing experience in consulting, transformation, delivery or technical leadership.

• The ability to work effectively where requirements are incomplete, priorities evolve quickly and the right answer is not immediately obvious.

• The judgement to balance engineering excellence with speed, practicality and customer value.

You do not need to be an expert in every technology we use. More important is the ability to learn quickly, understand unfamiliar environments and apply strong engineering and data fundamentals to new problems.

Nice to Have

• Certifications across Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Fabric, AWS, Google Cloud or leading AI platforms.

• Experience working with enterprise platforms such as Dynamics 365, Power Platform, Salesforce, SAP, ServiceNow or similar.

• Experience implementing responsible AI, AI governance, evaluation frameworks or model monitoring in enterprise environments.

• Experience designing or delivering modern data platforms that support analytics, operational applications or AI workloads.

• Experience across industries such as Manufacturing, Retail, Financial Services, Public Sector or Professional Services.

• A track record of turning successful customer solutions into reusable patterns or accelerators.

• Experience leading small, highly capable engineering teams from discovery through to production.

Why Join HSO?

AI is changing how organisations operate, but most businesses do not need more demonstrations or isolated pilots. They need people who can identify where AI will genuinely create value, ensure the underlying data foundations are fit for purpose and then build something that works in production.

That is what this role is designed to do.

As a Forward Deployed Engineer at HSO, you’ll work directly with strategic customers at the point where emerging AI, data and cloud capabilities meet real business problems.

You’ll have the opportunity to:

• Build real AI products and solutions rather than proof of concepts that never reach production.

• Work across AI, cloud and data platforms to solve complex customer problems end to end.

• Work directly with senior customer stakeholders and see the impact of what you build.

• Operate at the forefront of Microsoft’s evolving AI and Data ecosystem as part of a Microsoft Frontier Partner.

• Work across technologies, industries and business problems rather than being confined to a single product or platform.

• Help shape a new engineering capability within HSO rather than stepping into a narrowly defined existing model.

• Turn successful customer work into reusable technology and approaches that can scale across HSO globally.

You’ll join a senior, practical and customer focused team that values ownership, curiosity, engineering quality, speed and measurable impact.

Compensation and Benefits

We offer a competitive base salary alongside HSO’s standard employee benefits.

The role will also include a performance related element designed to recognise both individual contribution and the value created through successful customer delivery. Further details on the compensation structure and performance measures will be discussed during the recruitment process.

Apply now!

Fill out the form below, include your resume and we will get in touch with you shortly.

optional

LARGE ENOUGH TO SERVE, SMALL ENOUGH TO CARE

Why work at HSO?

At HSO we take pride in being large enough to serve, but small enough to care. We are uniquely positioned to empower you to transform your career without compromising your life and we take pride in investing as much in our people as we do in our clients.

  • 1

    Collaborative

    At HSO we enjoy a culture of collaboration and support and a collaborative hybrid working model where we team flexibly with purpose at the heart of our working arrangements. We use teamwork not just to meet challenges, but to also promote one another’s success.

  • 2

    Ever-Evolving

    We believe strongly in our values of always learning, always evolving and not standing still. HSO is dedicated to the ongoing professional development of people starting with the training and certification of our early career starters through to supporting senior experienced professionals.

  • 3

    Value Driven

    Our values and culture are attractive to people who want to work with value-driven teams around the world. Collaborating with colleagues and clients who are experts in their field provides an exceptional opportunity in your career to be continuously upskilling and expanding your knowledge and talent for accelerated learning and career progression.

  • 4

    Entrepreneurial

    At HSO we transform the way in which people work and how businesses operate to get results for our clients. This takes exceptional cutting-edge technology, knowledge, talent, determination and entrepreneurial spirit. Our culture and values support entrepreneurial mindsets and attitudes where your voice will always be heard.