Forward Deployment Engineer - Oil, Gas, & Chemicals

Forward Deployment Engineer - Oil, Gas & Chemicals

Travel: ≤70%

Location: Remote USA, CA or TX preferred

The Opportunity:

Picarro's Fenceline Monitoring Solution delivers continuous, real-time emissions intelligence to refineries and chemical plants. The technology works. The harder challenge — and the one that determines whether a pilot becomes a long-term program — is the early engagement: ensuring that Environmental, HSSE, and Operations teams understand the data in front of them, integrate it into how they work, and begin to operate differently because of it. That is the work of the Forward Deployed Engineer.

The FDE is embedded at customer sites during pilots and early-stage engagements. This role sets the benchmark for how Picarro unlocks value — changing the way operators and HSSE practitioners engage with real-time emissions data, moving from passive, retrospective review toward active, real-time decision-making. Success means customers take faster action on the signals that matter, reduce emissions, reduce risk, and build a more operationally excellent emissions management practice — with PicarroLink at the center of how they work.

WHO WE ARE LOOKING FOR

You are energized by change — specifically, by the challenge of shifting how an industry operates. You are not here to maintain the status quo or run a passive playbook. You walk into a refinery control room or HSSE office, earn trust quickly, and get people working differently. That is what drives you.

You are comfortable with emissions management technology. You understand emissions monitoring — detection, attribution, LDAR, real-time data and can speak credibly with the people using it. You are practical and hands-on in nature, and you are comfortable navigating a refinery or chemicals facility – e.g., by driving a survey vehicle, running real-time analytics in the field. You are energized by leading on the software side: Demonstrating how real-time emissions data and analytics fits into daily workflows, coaching teams through the shift from scheduled reporting to real-time signal-driven decision-making and making digital a natural part of how Environmental and Operations teams work. You bring energy to that. You make it feel achievable, not foreign.

You collaborate naturally with Customer Success and Product teams, because you recognize that your customer-facing observations are among the highest-quality inputs those functions receive. You translate adoption gaps into actionable product feedback, and you work with Customer Success to ensure that what gets tracked and built reflects real-world operational needs. You hold yourself accountable to customer outcomes — not to task completion.

You are also motivated by building something. The adoption models, training approaches, and workflow integration playbooks being developed right now will define how Picarro delivers at scale. The person in this role will shape them.

If that sounds like the work you have been looking for, we want to talk.

DUTIES

The Forward Deployment Engineer – Oil, Gas & Chemicals is responsible for driving adoption, enablement, and value realization at customer sites during pilots and early-stage engagements. Working with one customer at a time, the FDE ensures that Picarro's Fenceline Monitoring Solution and PicarroLink platform are embedded into Environmental, HSSE, and Operations workflows as an active, real-time tool — not a passive data archive. Delivery, commissioning, and hardware support are handled by Picarro's Operations and Delivery function; the FDE collaborates with that team but is focused entirely on the adoption and enablement work that determines whether a customer changes how they operate. Success is measured by the depth and consistency of customer adoption, the quality of value realized during the engagement, and the insights fed back to Customer Success and Product.

DUTIES INCLUDE

Pre-sales and pilot engagement: Participate in pre-sales conversations, technical working sessions, and pilot design — bringing operational credibility to discussions about how PicarroLink integrates into a customer's existing workflows, data environment, and compliance obligations. Help define what success looks like and how it will be measured.

Ongoing engagement with HSSE and Operations workers and leaders to build early alignment on objectives, establish relationships that support access and credibility during deployment, and ensure that pilot design reflects real operational constraints.

User onboarding and training: Design and deliver structured, hands-on onboarding for Environmental, HSSE, and Operations personnel. Build confidence in PicarroLink — alerts, dashboards, event interpretation, and daily data review. Develop site-specific superusers who can train and sustain adoption across shifts and personnel changes, reducing dependency on Picarro's presence over time.

Workflow integration — detect, attribute, resolve: Coach customer teams through the full real-time emissions management workflow: detecting concentration events, interpreting back-trajectory attribution, correlating mobile survey data with fenceline signals, and executing documented resolution. Drive this cycle into existing daily operational procedures and compliance practice, shifting customers from reactive, schedule-driven programs to proactive, signal-driven operations.

Picarro Link adoption and digital leadership: Own the goal of consistent, meaningful daily use of PicarroLink across Environmental and Operations functions. Lead on the software side — configuring detection thresholds, alerts, and dashboards in collaboration with the customer team; demonstrating and embedding digital ways of working as the new operational standard. Make the shift to real-time feel natural and inevitable.

Mobile survey enablement: Train customer personnel to operate the Mobile Survey Unit (UTV) for rapid fence-to-source investigation. Coach the use of meteorological and back-trajectory data to support defensible differentiation of on-site from off-site contributions. Build customer capability to run targeted field investigations independently.

Customer Success alignment and joint governance: Work closely with the assigned Customer Success Manager to maintain a real-time view of adoption health, workflow integration status, and value realization. Contribute to Quarterly Business Reviews, success criteria tracking, and customer health reporting. Ensure Customer Success has the ground-level insight needed to manage the account effectively.

Product feedback and customer-centric solution input: Translate direct field observations — workflow gaps, usability friction, unmet customer needs — into structured, actionable product feedback. Serve as a primary Voice of Customer input to the Product Owner and Industry Solution Director. Identify patterns across engagements that should drive roadmap prioritization, UX improvement, or new use case development. Partner with Product to ensure what gets built reflects how customers actually work.

Adoption playbook development: Contribute to repeatable onboarding, training, and workflow integration playbooks that scale the FDE model as Picarro grows. Use AI tooling to document field learnings, structure templates, and accelerate knowledge transfer across engagements.

Compliance context awareness: Maintain a working understanding of each customer's regulatory obligations — Refinery MACT, HON Rule, SSMP, and relevant fenceline action level frameworks — to ensure that PicarroLink configurations, workflow integrations, and reporting outputs align with compliance requirements and defensibility standards.

QUALIFICATIONS

Bachelor's degree in engineering, environmental science, chemistry, industrial operations, or a related field.

5+ years of experience in industrial or field-based roles spanning emissions monitoring, environmental programs, industrial operations, or digital solution