Forward Deployed Engineer

About the Role

This full-time position is part of a newly acquired startup within a major banking group, focused on delivering an AI-driven, autonomous banking platform tailored for Tier-1 financial institutions. The Forward Deployed Engineer works directly with strategic bank clients to transform their modernization goals into scalable production software.

Combining engineering expertise, architectural design, and client engagement, this role involves coding, designing integrations, and building enduring relationships with bank engineering leadership. It balances startup-style autonomy and ownership with the vast resources and impact of a global company.

Key Responsibilities

• Collaborate closely with bank architecture, infrastructure, and product teams to identify their system landscapes, challenges, and modernization objectives, converting business demands into technical plans.
• Design future state banking architectures to enable faster innovation cycles.
• Establish trusted technical partnerships with banking engineering and architecture leaders, turning initial deployments into enterprise-wide successes.
• Provide feedback from deployments to influence product enhancements and platform development.
• Create proofs of concept and develop end-to-end bank use cases including digital twins, checking account modules, and stablecoin wallets.
• Implement integrations with upstream and downstream banking systems adopting best practices for clean, maintainable, and production-ready code.
• Construct and sustain efficient data pipelines linking existing bank systems.
• Conduct performance testing to ensure scalability, resilience, and failover capabilities.
• Assist presales efforts by delivering technical demonstrations, hosting architectural workshops, and educating potential clients on the platform.
• Travel to client locations as required, typically between 25% to 50% depending on project phases.

Required Skills and Experience

• Demonstrated ability in building robust, scalable systems using Go or comparable systems programming languages such as Rust or Java.
• Extensive experience with distributed systems technologies including Kafka, concurrency models, event-driven architectures, and geographically distributed databases.
• Strong expertise with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure), incorporating SRE principles, infrastructure-as-code, and container orchestration tools like Kubernetes or OpenShift.
• Knowledge of data engineering involving the creation and maintenance of data-intensive, distributed pipelines.
• Proficiency in AI integration into workflows with up-to-date understanding of large language models and agentic development frameworks.
• A minimum of four years in a customer-facing technical role such as Forward Deployed Engineer, Solutions Architect, Consultant, or Software Engineer.
• Preferably familiar with fintech and banking domains, including financial transaction workflows and core banking technologies.
• Highly autonomous and capable of thriving in uncertain situations by creating frameworks and playbooks where none exist.
• Ownership mentality focused on outcome accountability, ensuring issues are fixed pre- and post-go-live to prevent recurrence.
• Adaptability to fluidly switch between software development, architectural design, and client facilitation activities.

Impact and Growth

• Contribute directly to core banking platforms utilized by top-tier global financial institutions.
• Enjoy substantial autonomy and responsibility within a senior, compact team.
• Deploy work directly into production environments at enterprise scale.

Benefits and Work Environment

• Impactful career growth opportunities within fintech.
• Access to personal and professional development resources.
• An inclusive and diverse organizational culture.
• Resources to support community engagement initiatives.
• Competitive remuneration and employee benefits.

Additional Information

Note: Candidates based near the company's FIS offices in Sydney, Australia and Christchurch, New Zealand should expect a hybrid work schedule.

FIS prioritizes privacy and data security in processing personal information and operates mainly through a direct sourcing recruitment model, with minimal involvement of outside agencies.