ava-labs - Senior Forward Deployed Engineer

• Partner Delivery • Own FDE technical delivery across a named set of institutional partners — designing the architecture across the entire Avalanche stack (node / validator setup, failover procedures, interoperability, …) from partner ask to working output • Pair with Enterprise Go-to-Market on active POCs to close the gap between commercial requirements and production-grade technical solutions • Represent Avalanche credibly in partner-facing technical settings: sit across from Directors of Engineering at financial institutions and translate bespoke asks into scoped requirements without losing the strategic frame • Engage in depth, not volume — most weeks are heads-down implementation work punctuated by focused technical syncs, not a meeting-heavy customer-success cadence • Protocol & Infrastructure • Work hands-on across the Avalanche stack: AvalancheGo, EVM, Interchain Messaging, and validator infrastructure • Design and implement solutions that operate within the constraints regulated institutions actually run: KMS/HSM remote signing, audit trails, restricted-peer networking, backup/restore procedures, firewall topologies • Respond to security assessment requests and technical diligence from institutional partners • Tooling & Developer Infrastructure • Contribute to and maintain the developer tooling and SDK surface owned by FDE. This is the same tooling that underpins partner deployments and the broader Avalanche ecosystem • Harden, extend, and document tooling driven by recurring institutional requirements, so that the next partner inherits a more capable platform than the last • Treat tooling work and partner delivery as a single loop: lessons from each engagement land back in the shared surface • Playbook Development • Identify when a one-off partner solution should become a reusable FDE artifact and drive that abstraction • Build and maintain runbooks, technical documentation, and the FDE Protocol Requests database (Notion-tracked) • Accelerate conversion timelines for subsequent regulated partners by compounding the institutional playbook with each engagement • Team & Function • Shadow and contribute to the most complex active engagements early, internalizing the institutional playbook in context • Take primary FDE ownership of named partners as ramp completes, reducing concentration risk on the team • Operate as a credible future #2 within FDE, exhibiting mentorship, end-to-end scope ownership, and comfort representing the function externally • Hands-on depth across the Avalanche (or a comparable L1/L2) stack: client implementation, EVM, cross-chain messaging, and validator infrastructure — able to design and ship solutions at each layer without senior backup • AI-native execution, proven ability to leverage modern coding assistants and agentic tooling to produce production-grade output at speed • Customer-facing maturity in enterprise or institutional settings; comfortable representing technical depth to senior engineering stakeholders at regulated financial institutions • Strong documentation and operational discipline: you close loops, build runbooks, and maintain the tracked artifacts FDE's institutional partners depend on • Pattern abstraction instinct, you recognize when a bespoke partner solution should be generalized and you drive that productization • YOUR AWESOME IFS • Direct experience deploying or operating blockchain infrastructure in production enterprise environments (on-prem or regulated cloud) • Prior exposure to financial institution POC or deployment cycles for critical financial market infrastructure, custody/clearing, or comparable institutional context • Familiarity with Avalanche's ecosystem, architecture, and institutional positioning • Signals of future people-management trajectory: past mentorship, end-to-end scope ownership, comfort representing a technical function externally