Principal Field Engineer

Описание вакансии

Who We Are:

Materialize is the context engine for AI agents and applications. It lets engineering teams use SQL to transform siloed operational data into up-to-the-second, trustworthy views into any element of their business. Use Materialize to deliver fresh context to AI agents, power data-intensive UIs, and create low-latency, event-driven architectures that drive microservices and core business processes. Materialize is trusted by General Mills, Bilt Rewards, and Crane Worldwide Logistics to solve their most pressing operational data challenges while building a live data foundation for their AI transformation.

Our team spans the US (with a NYC headquarters), Canada, and EMEA.

Investors:

Kleiner Perkins, Redpoint Ventures and Lightspeed Venture Partners.

About the Role

As a Principal Field Engineer, you are one of the most senior customer-facing technical leaders on the Field Engineering team. You own the full technical lifecycle of Materialize’s highest-value accounts, from initial architectural discovery through production deployment, ongoing optimization, and expansion into new use cases. You operate as a trusted advisor to executive stakeholders, shaping how large enterprises evaluate, adopt, and scale Materialize across multiple teams and use cases.

This role goes beyond traditional pre-sales or post-sales field engineering. You will serve as the named Technical Account Manager (TAM) for customers purchasing TAM services, deploy as a forward-deployed engineer on strategic design partnerships, build AI-powered internal tooling to scale field operations, and create the repeatable playbooks and frameworks that define how Materialize goes to market technically. This is a hands-on role for someone who wants to both lead by example and multiply impact across the organization.

Our Field Engineers report to the Vice President of Customer Success.This role is based in our NYC office near Astor Place, with an expectation of at least 3 days per week in person, or fully remote for candidates based on the West Coast.

Responsibilities

• Own technical strategy for Materialize's most strategic and high-impact accounts, serving as the principal technical point of contact for Fortune 500 engineering teams
• Partner with AEs on must-win and highly competitive deals
• Lead executive-level technical discussions with CTOs, VPs of Engineering, and enterprise architects
• Navigate complex enterprise evaluation processes, including security reviews and multi-stakeholder decision-making
• Design and oversee enterprise-grade POVs with clear technical and business success criteria
• Lead architectural discovery and deliver prescriptive recommendations, not just answers
• Deploy as a forward-deployed engineer on design partnerships and strategic logo acquisition, embedding with customer engineering teams to design and validate solutions
• Serve as the escalation point for complex or high-risk technical evaluations
• Identify and drive expansion opportunities across teams and business units within accounts
• Serve as the named TAM for customers purchasing TAM services, leading QBRs and strategic account reviews focused on business outcomes and platform adoption
• Proactively monitor account health, identify and mitigate adoption or technical risks, and coordinate escalations across Product, Engineering, and Support when issues arise
• Identify high-leverage opportunities to automate field engineering workflows using AI, and build and ship AI-powered agents and tools using LLMs, MCP, and Materialize's own platform
• Translate customer feedback into actionable product and roadmap input
• Partner cross-functionally with Sales, Product, Engineering, and CS to improve GTM execution
• Define and codify technical methodologies, POV frameworks, discovery templates, and competitive positioning guides
• Build scalable assets and accelerators that improve team efficiency and consistency
• Mentor and coach Field Engineers through deal reviews, shadowing, and structured feedback

What We’re Looking For

• 10+ years of experience in senior technical pre-sales, field engineering, solutions architecture, technical account management, forward-deployed engineering, or technical consulting roles
• Proven success leading complex enterprise evaluations and executive-level technical conversations with Fortune 500 engineering organizations
• Deep expertise in modern data architectures, including distributed systems, stream processing (Kafka, Flink), CDC pipelines, relational databases, and real-time data infrastructure
• Expert-level SQL skills and strong architectural judgment
• Demonstrated track record of building repeatable processes, frameworks, or tools adopted by others — not just individual heroics
• Entrepreneurial ownership mentality: you build process, you don't wait for it
• Ability to balance enterprise rigor with the pragmatism required in a fast-growing startup
• Experience building AI agents or LLM-powered tooling is a plus
• Experience at a data infrastructure startup (Series A–D) is a plus

Location: NYC (hybrid, minimum 3 days/week in HQ) or West Coast (remote)

Base Salary: $200,00 - 220,000 USD/year plus additional variable bonus and equity in addition to a full range of medical, financial, and/or other benefits. The base pay offered may vary depending on job-related knowledge, skills, and experience.

The salary range provided in this job description should not be considered a guarantee or commitment. The actual compensation offered may vary based on individual qualifications objectively assessed during the application and interview process, including but not limited to the candidate’s:

• Qualifications and relevant work experience
• Educational background and credentials
• Relevant skills and certifications
• Geographic location
• Market demands

Materialize reserves the right to adjust the salary range based on the candidate's specific circumstances and the overall compensation package.

We understand it takes a diverse team of highly intelligent, passionate, curious, and creative people to develop the exceptional product we are building. Our dynamic team has incredible perspectives to share, just as we know you do, and we take great pride in being an equal opportunity employer.