Forward Deployed Engineer

About Kinaxis

Are you looking to join an innovative, market-leading company where you can truly elevate your career? At Kinaxis we are serious about culture, we are serious about technology, we are serious about customers, and we are serious about not taking ourselves too seriously. If you are looking to be part of an incredible growth story, then we might just be the place for you!

In 1984, we started out as a team of three engineers. Today, we have grown to become a global organization with over 2000 employees around the world, 6 global office and a best-in-class HQ in Ottawa, Canada. As winners of several Top Employer awards globally, we are proud to work with our customers and employees towards solving some of the biggest challenges facing supply chains today.

Kinaxis is a global leader in modern supply chain orchestration, powering complex global supply chains, and supporting the people who manage them. Our powerful, AI infused platform provides full transparency and visibility across end-to-end supply chains, enabling our customers to make faster, better decisions. We are trusted by renowned global brands to provide the agility and predictability needed to navigate today’s volatility and disruption. With more than 40,000 users in over 100 countries, we are expanding our team as we continue to innovate and revolutionize how we support our customers.

Location

This is a remote position. You can work from home and be located anywhere in Canada or the US.

About the team

Kinaxis is building a Forward Deployed Engineers team whose singular mission is to help customers transform how work gets done in the Agentic Age.  This is not a consulting role and it is not a features team. It is a multi-disciplined deployment unit operating with the speed and ownership culture of a startup.

You will work shoulder-to-shoulder with customers from warehouse floor to executive sponsor designing, building, and shipping Agentic AI solutions on the Kinaxis Maestro Platform. When a solution works, you abstract it into a reusable pattern. When something breaks in production, you own the fix. You operate in a POD team: tight, multi-disciplinary, and self-directed. We are scrappy, resourceful, and self-directed. We move fast, trade tasks to whoever is closest to the need, and stay relentlessly focused on customer impact.

Attitude is the biggest asset. We hire for trajectory and mindset, not years on a resume. The right bias to action, ownership, and appetite to keep learning cannot be taught but every technical skill here can be. Bring those, and we will invest in the rest.

What you will do

• Own customer solutions end-to-end. Rapidly prototype, iterate, and deploy solutions in live operational environments where the stakes are real and the timeline is short.
• Deliver relentless customer value. Build trusted relationships from the IC level to the executive sponsor and become the technical face of our company in the room.
• Run multiple threads. Carry several customer engagements in parallel based on customer priorities and pod capacity. Set expectations early, renegotiate honestly when reality shifts, operate without close supervision, and own the outcome.
• Operate as a SEAL team. A small, tight, multi-disciplinary unit with focus and urgency  tasks are traded seamlessly to whoever is closest to the skills needed.
• Make the product better. Partner with Product and Engineering to convert field learnings into durable platform capabilities not one-off scripts.
• Drive adoption and lead the change. Mentor customer operators and guide their teams through solution transitions, so the new way of working actually sticks.

What we are looking for

• AI & Agentic Development
• Hands-on experience building LLM-based applications  RAG systems, multi-agent workflows, tool-use patterns, prompt and context engineering.
• Familiarity with modern AI-assisted development tools (Copilot, Claude Code, agentic IDE workflows) as daily practice, not novelty.
• Understanding of agentic orchestration patterns  when to use single vs. multi-agent architectures, how to handle memory and state.
• Software Engineering
• Solid, hands-on software engineering fundamentals: you have built and shipped real systems, not just scripts.
• Proficiency in at least one backend language (Python strongly preferred) and the ability to read and contribute across a polyglot codebase.
• Experience with REST and streaming APIs, authentication patterns, and integration with enterprise systems.
• Data Engineering & Platforms
• Ability to build and maintain data pipelines  ingestion, transformation, serving, and monitoring  using tools such as Airflow, Kafka, dbt, or equivalents.
• Working familiarity with modern data platforms (Snowflake, Databricks, BigQuery, or similar), including data modeling and performance fundamentals.
• Strong debugging instincts with imperfect, real-world data in production environments.
• Supply Chain Domain (Nice to Have)
  • Prior exposure to supply chain planning, logistics, or operations domains is a genuine plus  not a requirement

• 2 – 5 years of professional experience in software engineering, data engineering, solutions engineering, or a technical-founder role. Strong candidates at either end of that range are welcome to apply.

• Prior exposure to customer-facing technical roles solutions engineering, forward deployment, technical consulting, or a startup where you wore multiple hats is a strong signal, though not a requirement.

How to succeed in this role

• You measure your own success in business outcomes efficiency gains, exception reduction, SLA improvements not lines of code shipped.
• You bring field learnings back into the platform, helping abstract what works into durable, scalable capabilities.
• You operate with high agency: you unblock yourself, adapt when conditions change, and take ownership end-to-end without requiring close supervision.
• You are curious and pragmatic you explore new tools and apply them where they create real value, not because they are new.
• You communicate clearly across engineering, product, and business stakeholders written, verbal, and in the room.
• You move on what matters. You finish what you start. The outcome is yours no waiting for perfect clarity.
• You identify what matters, secure the help or learning you need, and deliver without being told.
• Every customer, teammate, and new tool is a chance to level up. Not knowing something is fine; refusing to learn it is not.
• You can sit with a frustrated VP, a skeptical architect, or a junior analyst and leave each one feeling heard, helped, and impressed.
• Undefined problem, undefined scope, undefined success metric and you still ship.
• You guide customers through transitions and mentor their teams to adopt new ways of working.
• Ability to travel as required up to 50%

#Intermediate #LI-CS1

Work With Impact: Our platform directly helps companies power the world’s supply chains. We see the results of what we do out in the world every day, when we see store shelves stocked, when medications are available for our loved ones, and so much more.

Work with Fortune 500 Brands: Companies across industries trust us to help them take control of their integrated business planning and digital supply chain. Some of our customers include Lockheed Martin, Unilever, P&G, ExxonMobil, Cisco and more.

Social Responsibility at Kinaxis: Our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee weighs in on hiring practices, talent assessment training materials, and mandatory training on unconscious bias and inclusion fundamentals. Sustainability is key to what we do and we’re committed to a long-term net-zero operations strategy. We are involved in our communities and support causes where we can make the most impact.

People matter at Kinaxis and here are some of the perks and benefits we offer, which may vary by location and employee:

• Flexible vacation and Kinaxis Days (company-wide days off)
• Flexible work options
• Physical and mental well-being programs
• Regularly scheduled virtual fitness classes
• Mentorship programs, training, and career development
• Recognition programs and referral rewards
• Hackathons

For more information, visit the Kinaxis website at www.kinaxis.com or the company’s blog at http://blog.kinaxis.com.

Kinaxis welcomes candidates to apply to our inclusive community. We provide accommodations upon request to ensure fairness and accessibility throughout our recruitment process for all candidates, including those with specific needs or disabilities. If you require an accommodation, please reach out to us at [email protected]. This contact information is for accessibility requests only and cannot be used to inquire about the status of applications.

Kinaxis is committed to ensuring a fair and transparent recruitment process. We use artificial intelligence (AI) tools in the initial step of the recruitment process to compare submitted resumes against the job description to identify candidates whose education, experience, and skills most closely match the requirements of the role. After the initial screening, all subsequent decisions regarding your application, including final selection, are made by our human recruitment team. AI does not make any final hiring decisions.