Forward Deployed Engineer, Federal

About the role

Cape is building a new model for secure mobility where privacy is treated as a non-negotiable right rather than a negotiable feature. As a Forward Deployed Engineer within the federal team, you will own the end-to-end technical success of Cape's solutions in the most sensitive government environments. You will translate ambiguous national security and mission requirements into resilient, privacy-first mobile systems that actually work under real-world constraints. You will serve as the primary technical interface between federal customers, product leadership, and the engineering organization, ensuring alignment from capture to sustainment. This role demands comfort with ambiguity, a builder's mindset, and the ability to operate effectively at the intersection of policy, technology, and field operations. You will be responsible for validating that Cape's platform meets rigorous security and operational standards while continuously feeding real-world signals back into product and engineering. In this capacity, you will help define what success looks like for Cape's federal customers and then make it happen on the ground.

Key facts

What you'll do

Own the technical delivery of Cape's products into federal and national security customer environments - from first prototype through operational acceptance and sustainment.

Embed with customer teams around the world to understand workflows, threat models, and constraints that do not appear in any requirements document.

Configure, integrate, and tune Cape's mobile core capabilities against the specific mission profile of each deployment.

Lead customer exercises, pilots, and demonstrations; structure them to produce decision-quality evidence rather than theater.

Provide direct technical support during live operations and incidents; conduct root-cause analyses and drive preventive fixes back into the platform.

Write production-grade code to build the glue, integrations, tooling, and one-off capabilities that unblock customer deployments.

Prototype new product features in the field, validate them against real mission use, and work with core engineering teams to expand on successful hypotheses.

Make sound tradeoffs between bespoke customer work and reusable platform investment - default toward the platform when the pattern repeats.

Translate customer mission requirements into clear, prioritized engineering asks; translate engineering constraints back into language program officers and operators can act on.

Advocate internally for customer priorities with concrete evidence: deployment data, operator quotes, blocking issues, and the cost of inaction.

Partner with Product and Engineering leadership to inform the roadmap - surfacing patterns across deployments that warrant platform investment versus one-off solutions.

Partner with Business Development and Solutions Architects on captures, pilots, and follow-on opportunities; provide the technical credibility that converts pilots into programs of record.

Operate within a high-trust, flat team structure where collaboration trumps hierarchy and you are expected to help write the playbook as you execute.

Approach every problem with a bias toward action, delivering tangible outcomes that demonstrate the value of Cape's privacy-first mobile capabilities in the field.

Requirements

You must possess a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field, or have equivalent practical experience.

You must have 2+ years of experience in a software engineering or forward deployed engineering role with a track record of delivering technical solutions in complex environments.

You must demonstrate technical competency across multiple domains of modern software development, including distributed systems, APIs, and secure mobile networking concepts.

You must have experience interfacing directly with customers or stakeholders under conditions of operational pressure, such as incidents or time-sensitive deployments.

You must be able to obtain and maintain a U.S. government security clearance, as required by the specific engagement.

You must be eligible to work in the United States without sponsorship for the role at the time of hire.

You must be willing to travel as required to support federal customer deployments, including to sensitive locations where operational security constraints apply.

You must be comfortable working with classified or sensitive information in accordance with applicable government protocols and handling procedures.

You must be able to write and maintain production-grade code in modern languages and toolchains, with a focus on reliability, observability, and maintainability in mission-critical contexts.

Nice to have

Experience working within national security or defense-focused program environments.

Familiarity with cellular telecommunications infrastructure and mobile core technologies.

Knowledge of privacy-enhancing technologies and secure communications architectures.

Experience with prototyping hardware-software integrations in field environments.

Background in policy, compliance, or standards relevant to government and critical infrastructure protection.

Practical notes

This role may require travel to sensitive sites and participation in deployments that operate under strict operational security guidelines.

Travel, visa, and security clearance requirements will be confirmed during the hiring process for positions that require them.

Work authorization must be current and not require sponsorship at the time of application for the listed location.