Full-Time
Senior Systems Engineer
Sales
Updated on 9/4/2026
Forward Networks
201-500 employees
Digital twin platform for network security
Compensation Overview
$240k - $275k/yr
Minnesota, USA + 2 more
More locations: Michigan, USA | Illinois, USA
In Person
Based in Illinois, Minnesota, or Michigan.
 Solution Engineering (1) |
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- Strong understanding of networking and security solutions and vendors
- Strong verbal and written communications skills with a focus on needs analysis, positioning, business justification, and closing techniques.
- 5+ years’ experience selling to Enterprise customers for a networking company or relevant software vendor.
- 2 Years experience with some scripting or programming language; understanding of program flow, conditionals, basic logic handling.
- Superior presentation skills
Forward Networks builds a platform that uses a digital twin of an organization’s network to improve security, visibility, and reliability across multi-cloud environments. It creates a virtual model that serves as a single source of truth for global network information, enabling instant search and proactive verification of how the network behaves. The platform validates security controls, helps Security Operations Centers manage attack surfaces and vulnerabilities, and accelerates troubleshooting by visualizing cross-network dependencies in one pane of glass. This approach helps large enterprises and federal agencies prevent outages, reduce risk, and cut operational expenses by lowering mean time to resolution (MTTR). The company’s goal is to provide continuous, end-to-end visibility and assurance of network behavior so that security and cloud, network, and IT teams can operate more efficiently and confidently.
Company Size
201-500
Company Stage
Series D
Total Funding
$112.5M
Headquarters
Palo Alto, California
Founded
2013
Get referred to Forward Networks
See people who can refer or advise you
Simplify's Take
What believers are saying
- August 31, 2026 free 30-day trial broadens enterprise adoption beyond giant budgets.
- January 27, 2026 record 2025 and 175% multi-year deal surge signal strong retention.
- Japan expansion on February 26, 2026 opens new enterprise demand and compliance-driven sales.
What critics are saying
- Forward Predict remains beta until autumn 2026, delaying monetization and inviting customer disappointment.
- Cisco, Juniper, and cloud-native observability vendors can bundle similar assurance features into existing stacks.
- If digital twin accuracy slips, autonomous networking customers will abandon Forward after one production outage.
What makes Forward Networks unique
- Forward’s mathematically accurate digital twin verifies changes before production across multi-vendor, hybrid clouds.
- Forward AI, launched January 2026, gives evidence-backed answers and workflows from live network data.
- Fortune 500 references, including Goldman Sachs and IBM, validate mission-critical trust and scale.
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Benefits
Grow with us - We’re an agile team and early-stage company with plenty of opportunities to grow, as a company and as individuals
Competitive pay - Every team member receives a compensation package with competitive pay and equity
We offer top-grade insurance, with medical, dental, and vision benefits for you and your family
Time off - Vacations, holidays, family days. With no tracked time off, you can go as long as it’s okay with your manager
Growth & Insights and Company News
6 month growth
↑ 1%1 year growth
↑ 0%2 year growth
↑ 1%Forward opens free 30-day access to its award-winning network digital twin. Aug 31, 2026, 09:00 ET The digital twin foundation for AI and autonomous networking, trusted by the Fortune 500 SANTA CLARA, Calif., Aug. 31, 2026 /PRNewswire/ - Forward (formerly Forward Networks) today opened free 30-day access to Forward Enterprise, its mathematically accurate network digital twin. For the first time, any network, security, or cloud team can run their production environment through the same technology that Fortune 500 companies depend on to know exactly how their network behaves. "For over a decade, the world's most complex networks have run on certainty because they trusted Forward," said David Erickson, CEO and co-founder of Forward. "We built this for the Fortune 500 first because that's where the stakes were highest. But certainty shouldn't be reserved for the biggest budgets. We're opening Forward Enterprise to organizations of every size, free for 30 days, because every team deserves to know what their network will do before they act." Since launching in 2013, Forward has been recognized as a 'Cool Vendor' by Gartner, named to the Fortune Cyber 60, included in the GSMA 100, and honored with numerous security and networking innovation awards. The Gartner(R) Hype Cycle for Enterprise Networking (May 2026, G00846621) named network digital twin technology as transformational and mentions Forward as a sample vendor. During the 30-day trial, teams can use Forward Enterprise to: * Understand exactly how your network behaves end-to-end, from the data center to the cloud, without piecing it together from spreadsheets and tribal knowledge * Ask anything about your network in plain English and get a verified, evidence-based answer instantly, powered by Forward AI * Find every asset a new CVE actually touches, and know which ones to fix first, based on real exposure Forward AI, included in every trial, replaces the old way of digging through configs and waiting on a senior engineer. Ask a question in plain English and get an answer verified against the network itself. "As networks become increasingly complex, certainty isn't a luxury - it's a fundamental requirement," said Zeus Kerravala, Principal Analyst, ZK Research. "Forward's digital twin moves teams away from 'tribal knowledge' and manual configs toward automated, AI-driven operations that keep networks secure and resilient." The free 30-day trial of Forward Enterprise, including Forward AI, starts now. No credit card required. Start at www.forwardnetworks.com/free-trial. About Forward Forward makes safe autonomous networking possible. The company's mathematically accurate network digital twin delivers deterministic proof of how any change will affect the production network before it is made, giving organizations the behavioral insight they need to move fast, operate securely, and scale with confidence across multi-vendor environments and every major cloud, including AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and IBM. Global leaders, including Goldman Sachs, PayPal, S&P Global, IBM, and Dell, alongside other Fortune 500 enterprises, fast-growing companies, and government agencies, rely on Forward to ensure network behavior matches intent. According to a recent IDC report, the average Forward customer experiences $14.2M in annual benefits through improved efficiency and security. Backed by A. Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Goldman Sachs, MSD Partners, Omega Venture Partners, Section 32, and Threshold Ventures, Forward is headquartered in Santa Clara, California. For more information, visit www.forwardnetworks.com. Media Contacts: Dustin Rausa Dawn Slusher
Forward AI wins two Cybersecurity Awards for bringing certainty to agentic AI. Jul 01, 2026, 09:00 ET Gold Globee(R) Award for Best Vulnerability Management and Assessment Product and Fortress Cybersecurity Award for Artificial Intelligence Recognize Forward AI as alternative to black-box automation, grounding every network action in mathematical proof SANTA CLARA, Calif., July 1, 2026 /PRNewswire/ - Forward (Formerly Forward Networks), the industry leader in network digital twin technology, today announced that Forward AI has received two prestigious network security honors: a Gold Globee(R) Award in the Best Vulnerability Management and Assessment Product category, and a Fortress Cybersecurity Award for Artificial Intelligence. These recognitions confirm that Forward AI is redefining infrastructure management through trustworthy and secure autonomous network operations. The Globee(R) Awards for Pioneers recognize innovative approaches, innovation, leadership, operational transformation, technology advancement, customer impact, and measurable organizational progress across industries and markets worldwide. Forward AI was named a Gold Globee(R) Awards winner in the Best Vulnerability Management and Assessment Product category. Forward AI's impact on cybersecurity was honored by a second independent authority. Presented by the Business Intelligence Group, the Fortress Cybersecurity Awards recognize the organizations, products, and people applying cybersecurity in ways that deliver real, measurable protection. Forward AI won in the category of Artificial Intelligence. These awards affirm what Forward's customers and partners already know: when agentic network operations are grounded in mathematical certainty, teams can move fast without introducing risk. "Winning recognition from both the Globee Awards and the Fortress Cybersecurity Awards validates that we are delivering on our vision of making agentic operations trustworthy and secure," said Chiara Regale, SVP of Product and UX at Forward. "For AI to earn a place in critical infrastructure, it cannot ask teams to take answers on faith. Forward AI shows its work, grounds every action in mathematical certainty, and preserves the policy and compliance guardrails that operators depend on. That is how AI becomes a trusted part of running the network, not a liability." AI That Shows Its Work As IT organizations accelerate AI adoption and modernization, network complexity is increasing while headcount remains largely flat, placing new pressure on teams to sustain reliability and security at scale. AI-driven operations offer a path forward, but only when they are built on accurate, complete, and verifiable network insight. Forward AI doesn't guess. It knows. Powered by the industry's only mathematically accurate network digital twin, Forward AI enables network, security, and cloud teams to interact with their networks through natural language while ensuring every response and every action is grounded in a complete, behaviorally accurate model of the entire production network. Unlike general-purpose AI systems that infer answers from partial data or probabilistic patterns, Forward AI reasons over the full network data stack, from raw configurations and state, to normalized vendor-agnostic models, to actual forwarding behavior and end-to-end contextual semantics. Every answer returns the underlying path, policy, or configuration line, so the operator, the auditor, and the next agent can all see the proof. Any team member can get expert-level insights using natural language. To learn more about the winners of the 2026 Globee(R) Awards for Pioneers, visit: https://globeeawards.com/pioneers/winners/ About Forward Forward makes safe autonomous networking possible. The company's mathematically accurate network digital twin delivers deterministic proof of how any change will affect the production network before it is made, giving organizations the behavioral insight they need to move fast, operate securely, and scale with confidence across multi-vendor environments and every major cloud, including AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and IBM. The world's largest and fastest-growing brands, including Goldman Sachs, PayPal, S&P Global, IBM, Dell, and other Global 2000 companies, along with government agencies, rely on Forward to ensure network behavior matches intent. According to a recent IDC report, the average Forward customer experiences $14.2M in annual benefits through improved efficiency and security. Backed by A. Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Goldman Sachs, MSD Partners, Omega Venture Partners, Section 32, and Threshold Ventures, Forward is headquartered in Santa Clara, California. For more information, visit www.forwardnetworks.com.
Forward named 2026 Fortune Best Workplaces in the Bay Area for third consecutive year. Jun 15, 2026, 09:00 ET SANTA CLARA, Calif., June 15, 2026 /PRNewswire/ - Great Place To Work(R) and Fortune magazine have honored Forward (formerly Forward Networks) as one of this year's Best Workplaces in the Bay Area, coming in at No. 18 on the 2026 list. This marks the third consecutive year Forward has earned a spot on this prestigious ranking, a testament to the company's enduring commitment to building a workplace where people are respected, challenged, and inspired. "Building Forward Predict, a first-of-its-kind capability that takes the risk out of network changes, is exactly the kind of hard, consequential work that demands a culture people want to be part of," said David Erickson, CEO and Co-Founder Forward. "Being recognized as a Fortune Great Place to Work in Technology validates what we already know: our team brings extraordinary talent to work that matters, and that combination is what makes it possible for us to redefine how networks are operated." To determine the Fortune Best Workplaces in the Bay Area(TM) List, Great Place To Work collected more than 70,000 confidential survey responses from employees at eligible companies via its proprietary platform. Companies were ranked based on their ability to offer consistently positive experiences, building trust with leaders, colleagues, and the overall organization. The Best Workplaces in the Bay Area list is highly competitive. Survey responses reflect a comprehensive picture of the workplace experience, with honorees recognized for delivering positive outcomes for employees regardless of role or status within the organization. To be eligible for the list, companies must be Great Place To Work Certified(TM), have at least 10 U.S. employees, and be headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area. "Congratulations to the Fortune Best Workplaces in the Bay Area," says Michael C. Bush, CEO of Great Place To Work. "By focusing on people, these companies are more resilient and effective in a business environment that demands speed, innovation, and agility." About Forward Forward makes safe autonomous networking possible. The company's mathematically accurate network digital twin delivers deterministic proof of how any change will affect the production network before it is made, giving organizations the behavioral insight they need to move fast, operate securely, and scale with confidence across multi-vendor environments and every major cloud, including AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and IBM. The world's largest and fastest-growing brands, including Goldman Sachs, PayPal, S&P Global, IBM, Dell, and other Global 2000 companies, along with government agencies, rely on Forward to ensure network behavior matches intent. According to a recent IDC report, the average Forward customer experiences $14.2M in annual benefits through improved efficiency and security. Backed by A. Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Goldman Sachs, MSD Partners, Omega Venture Partners, Section 32, and Threshold Ventures, Forward is headquartered in Santa Clara, California. For more information, visit www.forwardnetworks.com. About the Fortune Best Workplaces in the Bay Area Great Place To Work selected the Fortune Best Workplaces in the Bay Area List by surveying 1.3 million employees in the U.S., representing companies that collectively employ more than 7.3 million U.S. workers. Of those responses, more than 70,000 were received from employees at companies that were eligible for the 2026 Fortune Best Workplaces in the Bay Area List, and these rankings are based on their feedback. Companies earn eligibility by being Great Place To Work Certified, having at least 10 U.S. employees, and having headquarters in the Bay Area. Read the full methodology. About Great Place To Work As the global authority on workplace culture, Great Place To Work, a UKG company, brings 30 years of groundbreaking research and data to help every place become a great place to work for all. Its proprietary platform and Great Place To Work Model help companies evaluate the experience of every employee, with exemplary workplaces becoming Great Place To Work Certified and receiving recognition on a coveted Best Workplaces list. About Fortune Fortune is a global multi-platform media company built on a legacy of trusted, award-winning reporting and information for those who want to make business better. Independently owned, Fortune tells the stories of the world's biggest companies and their leaders, as well as a new generation of innovators who are moving business forward. Digitally and in print, Fortune measures corporate performance through rigorous benchmarks and holds companies accountable in regions around the world. Its iconic rankings include Fortune 500, Fortune Global 500, Most Powerful Women, and World's Most Admired Companies. Fortune builds world-class communities by convening industry thought leaders for exclusive summits and conferences, including the Fortune Global Forum, Fortune Brainstorm Tech, and Fortune Most Powerful Women. For more information, visit fortune.com.
Forward, formerly Forward Networks, has launched Forward Predict, a system that shows the complete impact of network changes before implementation. The technology runs proposed changes against a mathematically accurate digital twin of production networks, preventing costly errors from reaching live systems. The platform addresses a long-standing industry problem where production networks served as the only true test environment, creating risk and delays. Forward Predict validates changes across multi-vendor environments and major cloud platforms including AWS, Azure and Google Cloud. The company, backed by investors including Andreessen Horowitz and Goldman Sachs, positions the technology as foundational for autonomous networking, enabling AI agents to propose and verify changes safely. According to IDC, Forward customers average $14.2 million in annual benefits. Forward Predict will be available in autumn 2026.
Forward foresees autonomous, agentic networks with digital twin magic. Release comes amid major rebrand for networking firm May 20, 2026 Forward (formerly Forward Networks) unveiled a digital twin-based tool designed for the autonomous network use cases. Dubbed Forward Predict, the feature works by running each proposed change against a mathematically accurate digital twin of the entire production network. Forward said this approach is designed to prevent costly errors from reaching the production stage, while giving organizations more confidence to accelerate self-driving network efforts without the security pitfalls. "To predict the future state of a network with confidence you first need a mathematically accurate, fully representative model of the entire network estate as it exists today," Forward Chief AI Officer Nikhil Handigol told SDxCentral. "That means every vendor, every device, every operating system, every layer from L2 [layer-two] to L7 [layer-seven], on-premises, and cloud." Handigol explained Forward's Network Digital Twin uses header space analysis to "trace every possible path any packet can take across the network." Specifically, it applies proposed changes to the mathematical model of the production network, including distributed protocols like border gateway protocol (BGP) and open shortest path first (OSPF) and their full control and data plane interactions, before running the complete Forward Enterprise analysis suite against the predicted future state. This process includes routing validation, end-to-end path analysis, firewall and access control list (ACL) verification, segmentation and compliance verification, and automated regression testing. Model precision is backed by software validation against real network devices during testing and development. Upon customer deployment, the platform cross-references the model against the live network baseline to verify accuracy and continuously refine predictions. Downtime and agents on the rise. While Forward's network digital twin debuted over a decade ago, the firm has seen an acceleration in demand for the tech, driven by both AI and the specter of network downtime. Handigol pointed to Gartner estimates that a major unplanned network outage costs more than $500,000 per hour, with total business losses that can exceed $1 million. "Human error remains the leading cause of those outages, and a network digital twin directly addresses that. One of our banking customers reduced MTTR (mean time to repair) by 80%. That kind of outcome keeps demand strong," Handigol said. "The second force is agentic AI," Handigol continued. "As organizations move toward autonomous networking, the margin for error becomes orders of magnitude smaller than it has ever been. A mistake made by a human affects one change. A mistake made by an agent propagates at machine scale and speed. That changes the risk calculus entirely, and it changes what teams need underneath their automation." The exec touted a network digital twin becomes a "prerequisite" rather than an advantage in this case, where increasingly ubiquitous AI agents can get deterministic insight into network behavior and validate the impact of any proposed change before anything touches the production environment. "Without that foundation, autonomous networking is not really autonomous, it is just fast and risky," Handigol said, echoing similar stances from the likes of Nvidia and Google Cloud. The solution launch follows a major rebrand for the Santa Clara, California-based firm. Founded in 2013 as Forward Networks, the company is now simply known as Forward. "Forward was the first word of Forward Networks, and honestly our customers figured it out before we did. They had been calling us Forward for years, so we decided to make it official," Handigol said. That customer base includes Goldman Sachs, PayPal, IBM, and Dell, as well as government agencies and other Fortune 500 enterprises. "But the name change reflects something real," Handigol added. "The network digital twin has always been the foundation, and that does not change. What changes is the ambition. We are moving toward a world where every organization that depends on its network can run it autonomously, intelligently, and without fear of change. Forward felt like the only word that captured that direction. "Less explanation, more momentum. That is what the name means to us." More in automation & virtualization.