Senior Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE)

About Frugal

Frugal is an AI-powered coding agent purpose-built to tackle one of the most persistent problems in tech: runaway cloud costs. Despite years of optimization efforts, cloud expenses remain high—and with AI workloads on the rise, the problem is about to get much worse. While existing tools help right-size infrastructure, they overlook a major driver of inefficiency: the application code itself.

That’s where Frugal comes in. Our agent analyzes source code, cloud billing data, and observability signals to pinpoint inefficient code patterns, recommend improvements, and even automate fixes via pull requests. Unlike traditional FinOps approaches—which struggle to engage developers—Frugal embeds directly into their workflow, making cost optimization a seamless part of the development lifecycle. 

We’re looking for driven, curious, and talented people to join our team. Help us empower developers to reduce the cost of their applications.

We offer competitive salaries, benefit programs, stock options and flexible work from home options.

At this time we are focusing on hiring for our Ottawa Canada office.

About the Role

As a Senior Forward Deployed Engineer at our seed-stage SaaS startup in Ottawa (hybrid), you are the bridge between Frugal's AI-native Application Cost Engineering platform and the real-world challenges our enterprise customers face in optimizing cloud costs. 

You translate complex cost engineering problems into scalable solutions while embedding directly with customer teams to deliver measurable cost reduction outcomes. You partner with developers, FinOps teams, and engineering leadership at customer sites to implement (and extend) Frugal's platform, ensuring our AI-driven cost optimization capabilities integrate seamlessly into their existing workflows and deliver concrete business value from day one.

You take end-to-end ownership of customer success by diving deep into their application architectures, cloud usage patterns, and cost optimization challenges. Working closely with our CTO and VP of Engineering, you provide critical feedback that drives our product roadmap, ensuring Frugal's platform evolves to address the most pressing cost engineering needs in the market. You leverage your experience with software development, AI model integrations, and multi-cloud infrastructure expertise to configure and customize existing solutions, as well as building new functionality, while maintaining application performance and reliability.

Your success is measured by customer cost savings achieved, time-to-value acceleration, platform adoption depth, and the quality of both product feedback that drives our engineering priorities as well as product contributions themselves. You thrive in ambiguous environments where customer needs are loosely defined, and you excel at translating business requirements into technical solutions that leverage our AI capabilities to maximize cost optimization outcomes. You foster a culture of continuous improvement by staying current with cloud cost management trends, FinOps best practices, and emerging AI/ML techniques that can enhance our platform's effectiveness.

This role offers significant autonomy and impact as you help establish Frugal as the definitive solution for AI-driven application cost engineering while ensuring our customers achieve transformational results in their cloud cost optimization journey.

Must Have:

• 5+ years of software engineering experience with production systems and enterprise applications
• Strong proficiency in at least one modern programming language (Python, Go, TypeScript/Node.js)
• Hands-on experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure) and understanding of cloud cost structures
• Proven track record working directly with enterprise customers in technical consulting or solution engineering roles
• Strong analytical and troubleshooting skills to diagnose complex technical issues
• Ability to translate business requirements into technical solutions and vice versa
• Experience presenting technical concepts to diverse audiences (developers, executives, operations teams)
• Comfortable working independently in ambiguous, customer-driven environments
• Understanding of enterprise software integration challenges and solutions
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills for technical documentation and customer interactions
• Experience gathering requirements and providing technical feedback to product/engineering teams
• Ability to build trust and credibility with customer technical teams
• Strong empathy for customer challenges and commitment to driving their success
• Self-directed work style with strong ownership mentality

Nice to Have:

• Experience with AI/ML integration and/or working with LLMs
• Previous experience with FinOps, cloud cost management, or infrastructure optimization
• Previous experience in technical consulting, solutions engineering, or customer success engineering
• Background working with large enterprise customers
• Experience with compliance frameworks (SOC2, FedRamp)