Forward Deployed Software Engineer (Recent Graduate) - Chicago

About the role

By joining our team as a Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE), you will serve as a key member of our Data and AI Solutions team and partner with our customers to understand their most complex challenges and design and implement tailored solutions. You will bring your problem-solving ability, creativity, and technical expertise to help organizations put their data to work, solve critical business challenges, and drive meaningful impact. In this role, you’ll own end-to-end execution of high-impact projects while working across industries to solve complex, real-world problems.

As an FDE, you will take ownership of projects from concept through implementation, working in small teams to deliver tailored technical solutions. Your work may span designing technical architecture, working with large-scale datasets, developing custom applications, collaborating with customer executives, and contributing to team strategy.

What You'll Do

• Work directly with clients to understand their most pressing problems and design and implement data-driven solutions to address them.
• Work in small teams with minimal supervision, taking ownership of high-impact projects from planning through implementation.
• Discuss architecture with fellow engineers and establish strategy for your team.
• Wrangle massive-scale data and code custom web applications to deliver client solutions.
• Speak with client executives to share progress, gather input, and align on priorities.
• Collaborate internally with colleagues from a variety of backgrounds, including other FDEs, product teams, and strategy teams.
• Work externally with clients, often on site, to understand and tackle their priorities.

What You’ll Bring

• Ability to learn continuously, work independently, and make decisions with minimal direction.
• Ability to collaborate in teams of technical and non-technical individuals, and comfort working in a constantly evolving environment with dynamic objectives and iterative work with users.
• An eagerness to creatively solve technical problems using data structures, storage systems, cloud infrastructure, front-end frameworks, and other technical tools.
• Interest in working with and using large-scale data to solve valuable business problems.
• Willingness and interest to travel as needed to client sites; travel of 25-50% is expected, though requirements vary by team and location.

Qualifications

• Must complete degree program by January 2027.
• Recent graduate with up to 1 year of professional experience in engineering or technical role.
• Engineering background, preferably in fields such as Computer Science, Mathematics, Software Engineering, Physics, and Data Science.
• Proficiency with one or more programming languages, such as Python, Java, C++, TypeScript/JavaScript, or similar.

Pay and benefits

For applicants located in Illinois, CrossCountry Consulting is required to include an estimate of the compensation range for this role. The following range takes into account a wide range of factors including but not limited to, skills, experience, education, licenses, certifications, business needs, and internal equity. An estimate of the current range is $95,000 - $125,000 per year + annual bonus + additional benefits.