Staff Frontend Engineer, Forward Deployed

Foxglove

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Location: London, UK
Job Type: full-time
Salary: £140K – £165K
Posted: February 8, 2026

Job Description

Build the data infrastructure for robots operating in the real world.

Robotics is moving from research labs into production across factories, warehouses, vehicles, and field deployments. When robots fail, behave unexpectedly, or need to be improved, engineers rely on data to understand what actually happened.

At Foxglove, we build the observability, visualization, and data infrastructure that makes that possible. Our tools are used by robotics and autonomous systems teams to ingest, store, query, replay, and analyze massive volumes of multimodal sensor data from live systems and from production fleets.

About the role

We are looking for an experienced and highly adaptable Forward-Deployed Engineer to join our team at Foxglove. This role is ideal for a product-minded full-stack engineer who thrives in customer-facing environments and enjoys solving complex technical challenges in robotics and observability.

As a Forward-Deployed Engineer, you'll work directly with strategic customers to integrate and extend Foxglove's platform within their environments, while also contributing upstream to our core product. This position offers a unique mix of hands-on development, creative problem-solving, and close collaboration with customer teams. You'll act as a trusted engineering partner, ensuring Foxglove is seamlessly woven into customer workflows and identifying opportunities to drive improvements based on real-world use cases.

Key Responsibilities

Customer Collaboration – Embed deeply with customer teams to understand business goals, domain constraints, and technical requirements.
Design & Development – Architect and build end-to-end solutions with an experiment-driven, iterative approach (TypeScript/React, Node.js, Python, ROS, SQL).
Scoping & Planning – Draft clear scopes of work, timelines, and success metrics for proofs-of-concept through production roll-outs.
Hands-On Delivery – Code side-by-side with customer engineers, deploying on their cloud or on-prem environments to ensure successful adoption.
Cross-Functional Alignment – Partner closely with Sales and Customer Success on the same accounts to guarantee seamless experiences and measurable outcomes.
Product Feedback Loop – Relay frontline insights to Research, Product, and Engineering; your learnings shape our roadmap.
Internal Enablement – Document best practices, contribute to internal libraries, and mentor future FDEs so the function scales efficiently.

What we're looking for

5+ years of professional experience in JavaScript/TypeScript development.
3+ years of professional experience in Robotics or Autonomous systems
Experience in customer-facing engineering roles, ideally with robotics or autonomy exposure.
Proven history of rapid prototyping and iterative delivery with external stakeholders.
Front-end strength in React/TypeScript and back-end experience in Node.js or Python; familiarity with C++ or ROS is a plus.
Solid grasp of network and cloud architecture (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and database-backed REST APIs.
Comfortable owning problems end-to-end, learning what’s missing, and communicating technical details to any audience.
Willingness to travel extensively and work on-site with customers when required.
Bonus points:
- Experience with multiple database systems
- Experience designing SDKs, integration libraries, or internal tooling that reduced services cycle time.
- Previous experience in the Autonomous Vehicle Industry

What we offer

Work remotely when not onsite at customers
$300 monthly remote budget to build your personal workspace
All expenses paid company off-sites 1-2× per year

Why Join Us

Impact: Own growth at a fast-growing, high-leverage moment for the company.
Mission: Accelerate the development of the next generation of robotics and embodied AI.
Team: Work with world-class engineers, designers, and researchers passionate about open-source and developer tools.
Ownership: Drive initiatives end-to-end, with high autonomy and visibility.

🎯 Who is this job for?

This role is ideal for a Staff Frontend Engineer / Forward-Deployed Engineer with strong React and TypeScript expertise and solid full-stack experience. It suits a senior, product-minded engineer who enjoys working directly with customers, owning problems end-to-end, and building experimental solutions in complex domains like robotics and observability. You should be comfortable with cloud architectures, rapid prototyping, customer-facing delivery, and shaping product direction based on real-world usage.

💬 Potential Interview Questions

How do you approach building frontend solutions in highly technical, customer-specific environments?
I start by deeply understanding the customer’s workflows and constraints, then iterate quickly with prototypes, validating assumptions early and refining the solution as it moves toward production.
What makes frontend development for observability and data visualization challenging?
The main challenges are handling large data volumes, maintaining performance, and presenting complex, multimodal data in a way that is intuitive and actionable for users.
How do you design React applications that need to handle real-time or high-frequency data?
I focus on efficient state management, minimizing re-renders, using virtualization, and carefully managing subscriptions or streaming data to keep the UI responsive.
How do you balance rapid prototyping with long-term maintainability in forward-deployed work?
I prototype quickly but still follow core architectural principles, then refactor successful experiments into reusable, well-tested components once the direction is validated.
How do you communicate complex technical concepts to non-frontend or non-technical stakeholders?
I adapt my language to the audience, use diagrams or live demos when possible, and focus on outcomes and trade-offs rather than implementation details.
Describe your experience working directly with customers as an engineer.
I embed closely with customer teams, code alongside them when needed, and treat their problems as my own, ensuring solutions fit both their technical stack and business goals.
How do you approach end-to-end ownership of a feature or integration?
I clarify success metrics upfront, design the solution holistically across frontend and backend, handle deployment and monitoring, and iterate based on real-world feedback.
What considerations are important when building frontend tools for robotics or autonomous systems?
Reliability, performance, clear visualization of sensor data, and strong error handling are critical, since users rely on these tools to debug real-world systems.
How do you ensure frontend performance when working with large datasets or complex visualizations?
I use techniques like data downsampling, memoization, lazy loading, and offloading heavy computation away from the main rendering path.
How do you feed customer learnings back into the core product roadmap?
I document patterns and pain points observed in the field, share them with product and engineering teams, and help translate real customer needs into scalable product improvements.

📋 Job Summary

Foxglove is building the data infrastructure that powers real-world robotics, helping teams understand, debug, and improve autonomous systems at scale. We’re hiring a Staff Frontend Engineer (Forward Deployed) to work directly with strategic customers, designing and shipping end-to-end solutions using React, TypeScript, Node.js, and Python in complex robotics environments. This is a fully remote, full-time role based in the UK, with a salary range of £140K–£165K and frequent customer collaboration. Join Foxglove to have high ownership, influence the product roadmap with real-world insights, and accelerate the future of robotics and embodied AI.