Forward Deployed Manufacturing Engineer at Instrumental · Palo Alto

Manufacturing advanced electronics requires understanding millions of signals generated across complex assembly processes. Instrumental builds systems that capture and analyze those signals — images, test results, and process data — enabling engineers to discover failures, identify root causes, and deploy production controls that improve yield and product maturity. Leading companies such as NVIDIA, Cisco, and Meta rely on Instrumental to accelerate new product development and scale manufacturing across global factories. Instrumental has become mission-critical for manufacturers building and scaling the next generation of AI infrastructure hardware.

The Role:

You'll be Instrumental's person on the ground — traveling to customer sites primarily across the Bay Area, with a clear, company-critical objective every time. Some missions are hardware: racking equipment and integrating into live production lines. Others are software: giving feedback on training models, replicating customer tests, and doing whatever it takes to get a customer from "installed" to "this is indispensable" as fast as possible.

You won't just execute — you'll build. Every site visit is a chance to earn trust with the engineers and operations leaders who make or break adoption. You'll become the person they call because you actually know their line, their pain, and how to fix it.

You'll also go deep on Instrumental's technology in ways most people never see — including non-customer-facing capabilities — giving you a leg up on squeezing every bit of performance out of the system.

What You’ll Be Doing:

• Own a Mission and Deliver on It. In this role, you’ll travel to customer factory sites with a specific, company-critical mission. Common missions may include setting up and integrating physical equipment and accelerating customer “time to value” by hand-tuning Instrumental algorithms and software. You’ll have support from our global team, but you’ll be the engineer on the ground who will own mission success.
• Build Relationships with Customer and Factory Stakeholders. While onsite, you’ll endeavor to understand and build rapport with the various stakeholders who are critical to Instrumental’s success and pave the way for further adoption. You’ll leverage these relationships to complete your missions quickly and effectively. You’ll cement a strong technical and dependable reputation for yourself and Instrumental at large.
• Leverage Instrumental’s Software to Drive Value. You’ll quickly become an expert in Instrumental’s software and technology, including many non-customer-facing functionalities. This will enable you to quickly identify how to get the most performance out of the system – whether that’s by making a physical tweak in the real-world, adding training labels, or replicating customer tests. You’ll use your engineer’s understanding of how our customer derive value to rapidly achieve results.

What You Have:

• Experience getting things done in electronics factories. 3+ years of professional experience in electronics manufacturing doing engineering or operations – either on the “brand” or EMS side. You understand factory environments, processes, and politics and can leverage that expertise to get things done quickly.
• Love the factory floor more than an office. This role requires frequent travel to customer factory sites, primarily in North America. During peak periods, travel ratio may be as high as 80% of the time – and may include transiting in evenings and on weekends.
• Demonstrated ability to complete your mission. You can share countless stories of mission ownership and completion, where you were able to deliver despite unforeseen or challenging circumstances. You love the idea of applying your diverse engineering and operations skillsets to critical company missions.
• Excellent written and spoken English + ideally Mandarin or Spanish communication. This role will require rapid and effective communication with a variety of global stakeholders, representing Instrumental with our more important customers. We’re looking for someone who enjoys meeting and interacting with people – this is a front-line role. We will prioritize bilingual English/Mandarin or English/Spanish speakers.

You’re encouraged to apply even if your experience doesn’t precisely match the job description.

Instrumental offers competitive, location-based compensation. The following is a representative annual base salary range: $155,000-$169,000. This job is also eligible for variable compensation, and the job title at hire will be "Field Deployed Engineer".

Job leveling and salary opportunity are evaluated through our interview process—we review each applicant's experience, knowledge, skills, and abilities. Instrumental’s benefits include: Health, Vision, Dental, Public Transit/Commuter Plans, and Parental Leave.

At Instrumental, protecting company and customer information is a shared responsibility. All employees are expected to comply with company security and privacy policies and promptly report suspected security incidents or policy violations.