Forward Deployed Engineer

This isn't a remote support role, you're building the product shoulder-to-shoulder with the people using it. Navi is already live at major flight schools across the country, and every one of them wants more — dashboards, tools, the workflow features that make their day run better. You're the person who embeds with a customer, learns their operation, and builds exactly what they need, fast.

You're a compulsive builder who can scope and ship end to end on your own — you'd empathize with the customer's needs and show them something working by tomorrow. You don't bring a playbook; you reason from the actual situation and believe any problem can be figured out. You have the run-through-walls grit of a founder, the technical bar of a real engineer, and genuine curiosity about how a flight school runs — because that's where the best features come from. The simplest test: would a chief instructor and an engineer both want you in the trenches?

Every feature you ship makes a customer more committed, and the signal you bring back from the field — the edge cases, the workflow friction, the things nobody thought of — sharpens the whole product. You're not just serving one customer. You're supercharging how fast this company learns.

What you'll do

Embed with a customer until you understand their operation extremely well

Build the dashboards, tools, and features they're asking for, and ship them fast

Gather field intelligence — user feedback, edge cases, performance data, workflow observations — and bring it back to product and engineering in a way that drives action

Own the customer relationship on the ground — you are Navi's face at every site you touch

Work directly with engineering to compress the feedback loop between field reality and product iteration

About you

You can build and ship an app, dashboard, or internal tool end to end, by yourself — design, code, deploy

You learn a domain fast and can smoothly own talking to a chief instructor one hour and debugging at your desk the next

You stay effective when there's no manual, no clear owner, and the requirements keep changing

You're comfortable embedding with a customer and flexible about travel

You read a room and build trust fast — customers want you back on site, and you can turn a vague ask into a clear plan they're bought into

Nice to have

Familiarity with aviation systems, flight schools, avionics, or defense operations

Pilot certificate or flight training experience

Experience working on military installations, flight schools, or in DoW environments

Why this role matters

Navi's technology only matters if it works where it counts — in the cockpit, the briefing room, the ops center. You're the person who makes that happen. Every site you deploy is a new proof point. Every feature you ship makes a customer more committed. Every insight you bring back compounds across the whole product. You close the gap between product and reality — and that's what lets this company scale without breaking.

What you'll get

Flight training — earn your pilot's license and work with true domain expertise

Competitive salary and full travel coverage — flights, lodging

Impact you can see — work directly with pilots, instructors, and military operators using what you deployed

A role that scales into field operations leadership as we grow

How we work

Find a way. We don't wait for permission or perfect information. Ideas come from anywhere regardless of title. Figure it out, ship it, iterate.

Creativity over control. First principles over process. We'd rather have a creative solution that's 80% right today than a perfect one next quarter.

Update fast. Come in with a hypothesis, throw it away when the data says otherwise. Ego has no place here.

Intensity with focus. We work hard because the mission demands it. Clarity on what matters is how we make that sustainable.