Forward Deployed Engineering, Portworx

Everpure (NYSE: P) has evolved from storage pioneer to data platform, closing fiscal 2026 with $3.7 billion in revenue, its first billion-dollar quarter, and accelerating growth into FY27. Our strategic agenda spans the companies defining the next era of technology - hyperscalers, AI labs, the AI hardware supply chain, data platform providers, and the broader AI ecosystem. This type of work—work that changes the world—is what the tech industry was founded on. So, if you're ready to seize the endless opportunities and leave your mark, come join us. THE ROLE Portworx is building a Forward Deployed Engineering team to embed directly with our most strategic customers during their highest-stakes Kubernetes storage deployments. You'll be the technical bridge between complex customer infrastructure and Portworx itself: shaping production architectures, advising through critical rollouts, and turning field experience into structured product feedback that shapes our roadmap. This is a consultative role. The customer's teams operate their own environment; your job is to make sure the decisions they make are the right ones. That means the value you bring is judgment and depth rather than execution: knowing which architecture holds under load and failure, which assumptions in a proposed design are wrong, and what a given storage fabric, hypervisor estate, or network topology will and won't support. Most of this work sits in the customer's own data center. Our largest and most complex deployments run on customer-owned compute, Fibre Channel and IP storage fabrics, established virtualization estates, and enterprise network designs that predate Kubernetes by a decade. You need to be genuinely conversant below the Kubernetes layer, at the server, the HBA, the switch, and the array, because that is where these deployments succeed or fail and where the customer's infrastructure leaders will test whether you're worth listening to. This is not a support role and not a pure pre-sales role. You'll own engagements end-to-end: from solution validation before you ever get on a plane, through architecture design, production readiness, and a clean handoff. You'll leave behind documentation and decision guidance that make the next customer's journey faster. Just as important as the technical substance: this is a relationship-building role. Day to day you'll work alongside the customer's platform and infrastructure teams, mostly their senior engineers, leads, and architects. You'll also engage directly with the Directors and VPs of Infrastructure and Platform Engineering who set platform direction, and the goal is to become a trusted advisor on that broader strategy, not just their Portworx footprint. Done well, this role earns Portworx (and Pure) real standing and visibility across the customer's platform organization. WHAT YOU'LL DO Design and review production Portworx architectures for complex, high-stakes environments: bare metal and virtualized on-prem estates, multi-cluster and DR topologies, KubeVirt VM migration, regulated and air-gapped deployments, and hybrid footprints where customers also run cloud or CaaS Pressure-test the customer's intended design against the compute, storage fabric, hypervisor, and network they actually have, and tell them plainly where it won't hold Advise on the decisions that determine whether a deployment survives contact with production: storage class design, KVDB topology, snapshot and backup policy, replication mode and placement, capacity and sizing Guide the customer's infrastructure and platform teams through the layers underneath Portworx: LUN presentation and masking, multipath behavior, LVM layout, HBA and NIC choices, MTU and bonding, VLAN and routing boundaries, hypervisor datastore and passthrough decisions. Their engineers execute; you make sure the design is sound and the tradeoffs are understood Where it strengthens the recommendation, validate an architecture pattern in a lab before traveling on-site, so advice rests on something tested rather than assumed Define the failure-mode and performance validation plan before go-live (node, rack, and AZ loss, path and fabric failure, network partition, upgrade paths), then interpret the results with the customer Act as the senior technical voice during critical rollouts and live escalations: direct the diagnosis, frame the decision, and pull in Support and Engineering when the problem belongs to them Author reference architectures, runbooks, and decision frameworks that become reusable IP across engagements Upskill customer platform teams so they can operate independently post-handoff Build and sustain relationships across the customer's platform organization: daily with the senior engineers, leads, and architects you work beside, and directly with the Directors and VPs of Infrastructure and Platform Engineering, by understanding and helping shape where their platform is headed rather than only where Portworx sits in it Conduct periodic visits to established, already-live accounts to maintain the relationship, stay current on their evolving platform needs, and surface expansion opportunities. Many customers start small and grow, and this is how that growth gets found and won Develop enough fluency in the customer's development environment and workflows to speak credibly to their platform needs as a whole Log and structure field feedback (bugs, feature gaps, roadmap signal) for a recurring feedback loop with Product and Engineering Partner closely with Sales Engineering, Customer Success, and Support to triage which engagements warrant FDE involvement We are primarily an in-office environment and therefore, you will be expected to work from the Santa Clara, Chicago, or New York office in compliance with Everpure's policies, unless you are on PTO, or work travel, or other approved leave WHAT YOU BRING The depth below is what the role runs on. We expect you to have earned