Forward Deployed Engineer

Forgis is building the intelligent layer for manufacturing plants: an orchestration platform that integrates machines across vendors, hardware types, and applications. On top of it, we bring real-time intelligence: digital engineers that learn from data, make decisions, and continuously optimize production, from configuring and validating lines to predicting failures and guiding operators. From one interface, Forgis turns disconnected automation into a unified, adaptive system: the factory's brain.

We just raised $4.5M and are hiring the engineers who will define how Forgis lands inside real factories.

At Forgis, the Forward Deployment Engineer (FDE) role isn't just a job title. It's the blueprint of our founding engineers. Inspired by the Palantir model, FDEs embed directly with our customers on the factory floor, tackling the messy reality of industrial automation: PLCs that don't talk to each other, wiring nobody documented, machines from different vendors that all need to be unified.

You'll operate at the intersection of industrial control and AI, designing and deploying solutions that optimize production lines, predict failures, and transform how factories run.

• Immerse. You'll be on the industrial frontline with our customers, seeing production flows and bottlenecks in real time. Reading electrical schematics, integrating with PLCs, Robots and drives, talking to operators. Reports and dashboards can't replace being there.
• Integrate. Bring up Forgis on the line. Connect to the existing PLCs, wire up industrial protocols, and bridge the shop floor to our platform.
• Solve. Tackle complex AI and automation problems head-on: predicting machine downtime, surfacing root causes of quality issues, optimizing assembly lines. Prototype, iterate, ship. When we say "solve it," we mean get your hands dirty in PLCs, robots, data, and code until the problem stops being a problem.
• Advance. Bring state-of-the-art tooling to industrial environments that have never seen this level of intelligence. Predictive maintenance, anomaly detection, smart automation: taking these from research papers to running on real production lines is the real challenge.
• Measure. Everything is quantified. You don't stop at "it works." You measure throughput, downtime reduction, defect rate. Real-world impact drives product direction and future innovation.

• An MSc in engineering from a top university (ETH, EPFL, TUM, or similar)
• Eligible to work in Switzerland (Swiss, EU, or EFTA citizenship)
• Hands-on Industrial experience, having a proved experience in a real environment
• Comfortable reading electrical schematics and working alongside industrial wiring
• Working knowledge of industrial protocols
• A solid software engineering foundation in Python
• Field / commissioning experience: you've spent time on industrial sites, not only in labs
• A track record of shipping real work: a complex project, a winning hackathon, a side project that exists in the world, a machine you brought to life.

Founding-engineer impact. Zurich-based team with international customers. The role is half at client sites turning Forgis on real production lines, half at HQ shaping the platform alongside the people who built it. You'll see your work change how factories run, and you'll measure it.