Forward Deployed Engineer - London / Zurich / Munich / Berlin (Hybrid)

As a Forward Deployed Engineer at Optiml, you will sit at the intersection of product, engineering, and our most strategic customers. You’ll work directly with large real estate owners and consultancies, embedding into their workflows to ensure our software becomes a core part of how they operate—not just a tool they deploy. Your mission is to drive successful, high-impact implementations: deeply understand customer processes, redesign workflows around our platform, and translate complex, messy requirements into scalable technical and product solutions. You’ll own the end-to-end lifecycle of complex deployments, from early scoping and prototyping through to adoption and long-term success. This role combines hands-on technical execution with strong customer and stakeholder leadership.

You will act as a trusted partner to senior client teams while working closely with Optiml’s Product, Engineering, and Sales functions to generalize insights into our broader product roadmap. We’re looking for a high-agency engineer with experience operating in ambiguous, high-friction enterprise environments. This is not a support or delivery role. If you thrive at the intersection of technology, customer impact, and ownership—and enjoy doing whatever it takes to make software truly stick—this is an opportunity to shape how Optiml scales with its most important customers.

About Optiml: Optiml is revolutionizing real estate with our Real Estate Decision Intelligence (REDI) software—a new class of decision technology that embeds AI to help decarbonize buildings while optimizing asset financial performance. We are an ETH Zurich spin-off that launched its first product in April 2024 and has since been scaling across Europe and the United States, earning major industry recognition, including the 2024 ULI Europe PropTech of the Year and 2024 ZIA PropTech of the Year awards. We are backed by top-tier US and European investors, including Innovation Endeavors, Planet A, BitStone, and Kompas, who support our mission to empower real estate investors, asset managers, and consulting partners to deliver a cost-effective, value-preserving transition to Net Zero. As of early 2026, we are expanding our team to broaden our product lines and scale operational delivery for a growing global client base.

Tasks Responsibilities

• Embed with Real Estate Giants: Partner directly with large real estate owners and consultancies to understand their existing processes. You will be the bridge bringing our software into the heart of their daily operations.
• Workflow Architecture: Don’t just implement software - redesign how our customers work. You will map out their data and workflows to identify exactly where our product fits, replacing legacy manual processes with automated, scalable solutions.
• Master the "Scoping" Mindset: Act as the first line of defense against scope creep. Deeply question requirements from customers to distinguish between what they ask for and what they need.
• Drive Implementation Success: Own the lifecycle of our most complex deployments. You are responsible for ensuring our software becomes indispensable to the customer’s team, not just technically integrated but culturally adopted.
• Translate & Generalize: Translate chaotic feedback from non-technical stakeholders into structured, generalized product roadmap items for the Product team.
• Accelerate Feedback Loops: Brainstorm, implement & test early prototypes directly with customers to iterate rapidly, while ensuring we build features that solve actual industry pain points.

Who we are looking for

• Embrace Challenges: You prioritise speed and flexibility. You are adept at navigating the slow-moving structures of large enterprises while maintaining startup momentum.
• Push The Limits: You have "high agency." You don’t wait for permission or resources; you are self-driven and willing to do whatever it takes—from cleaning dirty data to training a consultancy team—to unblock a customer.
• Inspire Others: You act as a stabiliser during tense customer situations, enhancing morale and collaboration across Sales, Engineering, and our clients.
• Champion The Customer: Your meticulous attention to detail ensures that even the most demanding customers feel heard, understood, and supported.
• Take Ownership: Think out of the box and do what it takes to achieve the best customer outcomes.

Requirements

• You have 3+ years of professional experience, ideally as a founding engineer or in an early-stage startup environment.
• Outstanding written and verbal communication skills in English & German.
• A proven track record of deploying software within the intricate, high-friction workflows of large-scale enterprises.
• Confident in engaging with C-suite and senior stakeholders; you are a peer in the boardroom and a partner in the field.
• Hands-on proficiency with APIs, data modelling, and system architecture. You can navigate deep technical discussions to earn engineering respect and accurately scope integrations.
• Readiness to travel to client sites to ensure successful implementation and relationship building.

Nice to have:

• Experience in the Finance, Real Estate or Construction industries.
• Experience working at or with major strategy/technical consultancies.
• Experience moving a product from "startup" to "scale-up".

Benefits

• Impact: Play a critical role in scaling a company transforming how real estate decarbonises.
• Ownership: Build and own the operational backbone of a fast-growing startup.
• Growth: Work closely with an exceptional leadership team and gain exposure to all company functions.
• Culture: Join a mission-driven, high-performance, and collaborative team.
• Benefits: Competitive salary, equity options, learning budget (CHF 1k), and additional insurance support. 25 days paid vacation.