Forward Deployed Operator - Software Engineering

About the role

Onodrim is building Europe's largest defence and industrial platform. We acquire specialist manufacturers in critical defence and dual-use supply chains, then invest behind their growth with capital, technology and operating know-how.

Forward Deployed Engineers are the engineers who put Onodrim's software into the hands of the people who use it. You'll build and deploy software for the Onodrim platform itself and – most importantly – inside our portfolio companies: the plants, lines, warehouses and back offices of the manufacturers we acquire.

This is not a ticket-queue job. You'll sit with a production planner, a quality manager or a plant director, understand the problem they actually have, and ship something that solves it – often within days, on top of the systems they already run. We deploy existing tools (data platforms like Palantir Foundry, off-the-shelf MES, ERP and BI products) and write custom code only where it makes a real difference. Knowing which is which is the job.

You'll work alongside our Forward Deployed Operators, who diagnose where a plant loses value on the floor and in the back office. Where they find a problem that software can fix, you build and deploy the fix, then stay until it is used every day. What you learn on site flows back into what Onodrim builds next.

What you'll do

• Find the real problem. Spend time with the people who run the plant – planners, schedulers, buyers, quality and finance – and work out what is actually slowing them down before deciding what to build.
• Deploy and configure. Stand up data pipelines, integrations and applications on Onodrim's platform, adapting them to each site's systems, data and constraints rather than starting from a blank page.
• Build what's missing. Write custom code – services, integrations, internal tools, data models – where off-the-shelf products fall short, and ship it into live production environments.
• Integrate the stack. Connect ERP, MES, SCADA, PLM, quality and finance systems so data flows end to end; replace the spreadsheets and manual handoffs that bridge them today.
• Own the data. Pull, clean, model and serve production, cost and transactional data so operators, plant managers and Onodrim can make decisions on it.
• Make it stick. Train users, write the runbooks, handle the first weeks of support and leave the site able to run what you built without you.
• Work with our Forward Deployed Operators. Turn their floor-level diagnosis into software; feed what the data shows back into their loss analysis.
• Ship for Onodrim itself. Build and run the internal tooling the platform needs – across finance, operations, security and portfolio reporting – with the same standards as sub-co work.
• Feed the product. Bring field patterns back to Onodrim's core engineering team so what works at one site becomes standard at the next.
• Own outcomes. Agree on measurable targets with the site, track them and stay accountable: adoption, data coverage, hours saved, throughput unlocked.

Requirements

What you'll bring

• A degree in computer science, software engineering or a closely related technical discipline – or an equivalent track record of shipped software.
• At least 2–4 years' experience as a software engineer, with at least some of it spent deploying software to real users: forward deployed, solutions or implementation engineering, or product engineering with direct customer contact.
• A builder at heart: you'd rather ship something imperfect this week and improve it than design the perfect system for next quarter.
• Strong general-purpose engineering skills – you're fluent in at least one of Python, TypeScript or Java, write SQL without thinking about it, and can pick up a new language, API or platform in days.
• Comfort with data: ingesting messy exports from ERP, MES and quality systems, modelling them and producing something people trust.
• Good judgement on build vs. buy vs. configure – and the willingness to use an existing tool when it does the job.
• Credibility with non-engineers: you can sit with a shift supervisor or a controller, understand their world, and explain what you're building in their terms.
• Clear, direct communication in English, written and spoken.
• Willingness to travel extensively and spend extended periods at portfolio companies across Europe.
• Right to work in the UK, Switzerland or the EU.

Nice to have

• We operate our business in English but fluency in one or more additional European languages is hugely helpful – German or Italian especially valuable.
• Experience in or around manufacturing, defence, logistics or another industrial environment where the software meets physical operations.
• Prior forward deployed, solutions or consulting-style engineering where you owned the outcome at the client, not just the code.
• Familiarity with industrial data and protocols: OPC UA, PLC exports, machine logs, time-series data.
• Experience building LLM-backed tools on top of enterprise data, and a view on where they help and where they don't.
• An entrepreneurial streak: a start-up you ran, a product you shipped on the side, or a stint in a small team where you did whatever the problem needed.