Data Forward Deployed Engineer – Applied Data & ML Engineering
Tessera Labs is hiring a Data Forward Deployed Engineer – Applied Data & ML Engineering for a remote role open to applicants in United States. It pays $180k-$233k a year and Level rates it ; you can apply on Tessera Labs.
Level's read on this job
- Level rates this machine learning engineer role Builds AI ●●●●: the job is building AI systems.
- This is listed as a remote role.
- The posting mentions Databricks, AI automation and AI evaluation among its tools and skills.
- Tessera Labs has 32 other open roles on Level.
- Posted in the last few days.
AI in this role
About Tessera Labs
Tessera is an AI-native platform for enterprise transformation. The multi-agent platform delivers governed execution across ERP, CRM, HCM, and finance systems, cutting timelines from years to weeks and costs by more than half. Built on deep expertise across SAP, Oracle, Salesforce, Workday, and other systems of record, Tessera combines the reliability of an integrator with the speed of an AI-native platform.
For decades, enterprises have struggled with fragmented business systems, where migrations have consumed hundreds of millions of dollars, data stayed inconsistent and unreliable, and business processes slowed under manual review. Tessera was founded to change that, for SAP and every other system enterprises depend on. The name itself — a tessera, a single tile in a mosaic — reflects our mission: unifying the disparate pieces of the enterprise into a coherent whole. Tessera is an AI-powered, multi-agent platform that harmonizes systems and lets teams work in plain English.
Role Summary
We are looking for a Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) for our Applied Data & ML capability. You will work directly with enterprise clients to turn fragmented, multi-system enterprise data into trusted data products and production ML models.
You will collaborate closely with client teams, SMEs and Tessera product engineers to translate complex business logic into data pipelines, canonical data models and applied ML solutions, and you will feed proven patterns back into the Tessera platform.
The role requires strong experience in SQL, Python, data modeling and applied machine learning, combined with the judgment to own ambiguous client problems end to end. This is a mid- to senior-level role.
This role owns delivery quality on your engagements: validation, reconciliation to source and stakeholder sign-off.
Why Join Tessera
Build at the frontier of applied AI. Work on a multi-agent AI platform that automates complex business workflows across SAP, Oracle, Salesforce, Workday, Snowflake, MuleSoft and more, and help bring real AI automation to the enterprise.
Shape the platform, not just the project. The pipelines, canonical models, mapping rules and ML components you build become reusable parts of the Tessera platform, and your field input goes straight to our product and R&D teams.
Work on real enterprise data. Harmonize master and transactional data across ERP, CRM, HCM and finance systems, and take ML models from feature engineering to production.
See more in a year than most see in five. You will work across several enterprise customers and landscapes, alongside senior functional architects, Forward Deployed Engineers and AI engineers.
Own real outcomes. You will work in a software platform company where engineers are trusted with decisions, and where the measure of success is what customers adopt and keep using.
Key Responsibilities
1. Deploy with Clients
Embed with client teams to scope data and ML problems, map source systems and deliver working outcomes in weeks.
Own delivery quality, including validation, reconciliation to source and stakeholder sign-off.
Turn repeated client patterns into reusable components for the Tessera platform.
2. Build and Harmonize Enterprise Data
Design and develop scalable ETL/ELT pipelines using SQL, Python and dbt to ingest and transform data from enterprise platforms, including ERP, CRM, HCM and finance systems.
Design canonical enterprise data models and cross-system mapping rules that standardize master and transactional data.
Implement validation, reconciliation and monitoring to resolve duplicate, inconsistent and legacy data.
3. Apply Machine Learning
Engineer features and build models on enterprise data for use cases such as forecasting and anomaly detection.
Deploy models to production and monitor them.
Required Qualifications
5+ years of experience in Data Engineering, ML Engineering or Applied Data Science.
Enterprise data harmonization, migration or analytics experience across ERP, CRM or finance systems.
Experience in client-facing, consulting or forward-deployed roles.
Advanced SQL, and strong Python for data pipelines and ML workflows.
Experience building ETL/ELT pipelines and processing large-scale enterprise datasets.
Relational and dimensional data modeling.
dbt for transformation, testing and documentation.
Cloud platform experience (AWS, GCP or Azure).
At least one ML model built, deployed and monitored in production on business data.
Feature engineering from structured and time-series enterprise data, and model evaluation and monitoring.
Working knowledge of core enterprise data domains and business processes, such as finance, supply chain and master data.
Systems thinking: the ability to understand complex enterprise systems and business processes, and to turn business rules into data and ML solutions that work across platforms.
Client ownership: comfortable working directly with client engineers, functional consultants and business stakeholders, scoping ambiguity, and pushing back with evidence.
Data problem solving: strong analytical skills to diagnose and resolve enterprise data and model performance challenges.
Ownership and execution: the ability to take ownership of complex problems and deliver production-grade solutions that scale across enterprise environments.
Who This Role Is Not For
If you prefer to work on clean, well-documented datasets inside a single platform team, this is not the role: the data here is fragmented, duplicated and spread across ERP, CRM, HCM and finance systems. If you would rather hand a pipeline or model over than own it through validation, reconciliation to source and client sign-off, the same applies. And if you are not comfortable working directly with client stakeholders, scoping ambiguity and pushing back with evidence, you will not enjoy this role.
Preferred Qualifications
Hands-on experience with a cloud data platform such as Snowflake or Databricks.
Distributed processing (Spark / PySpark, DuckDB or similar).
First-Year Measures of Success
Month 1: Up to speed on the Tessera platform and delivering on at least one client engagement. Trusted by the client’s data and business stakeholders and by the Tessera team on that engagement.
Month 2: Your first data product in production, validated and reconciled to source, with stakeholder sign-off. Repeated client patterns captured as reusable components for the Tessera platform.
Month 3: At least one ML model, for example for forecasting or anomaly detection, deployed and monitored in production on client data. Your reusable components in use on other engagements.
If you want to turn fragmented enterprise data into trusted data products and production ML models, and to build it with us, we would like to hear from you.
Tessera Labs is an equal opportunity employer. We welcome applicants of all backgrounds and do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other legally protected status.
No third party may recruit, solicit candidates, publish job opportunities, use Tessera Labs' name or branding, or represent that they are acting on behalf of Tessera Labs without prior written authorization. Any such activity conducted without explicit written consent is strictly prohibited.
How we rate this
Data Forward Deployed Engineer – Applied Data & ML Engineering at Tessera Labs rates 85 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Builds AI (AI Level 4 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.
Builds AI. The job is building AI systems.
- ●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
- ●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
- ●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
- ●○○○ Little AI0 to 39
Levels come from how often the tools, models and workflows of the role are named in the posting itself. Read the description and count the AI tools, models and workflows it names.
Prepare for this job
Built from this posting and from similar jobs on Level.
Skills and AI tools this role asks for
Also common in machine learning engineer jobs at this level
Pay
- This job starts at
- $180k
- Typical machine learning engineer job
- $199k
This posting starts 10% below the typical machine learning engineer job. See machine learning engineer jobs
Questions you could be asked
- Tell me about a workflow you automated with AI tools, end to end.
- How do you decide that one model's output is better than another's for a given task?
- What are the limits of Databricks that you've run into, and how did you work around them?
- How would you decide a model or AI system is ready to ship?
- Tell me about a time a model underperformed in production. How did you find out, and what did you change?
Adapt your resume
- List these exact terms on your resume: AI Automation, AI Evaluation, and Databricks. An applicant tracking system matches the wording, not the idea.
- Attach one line of real, concrete experience to at least one of them. A tool named with nothing behind it rarely survives a human read.
- Lead with what you built, trained or shipped. This role is judged on the AI system itself, not the tools around it.
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