Forward Deployed Engineer

About the Position

Hi, I'm Erik, CTO at Circonomit. We build the decision platform industrial companies use to plan their production. The problems that show up at every customer:

• Optimization software fails in the gap between what a company actually does and what the model assumes. Someone has to sit with the people who plan today and turn how they really decide into something a machine can compute.
• ERP and Excel exports arrive inconsistent and incomplete. The numbers that cannot be right have to be caught before the customer notices them.
• The same planning problem shows up at the second and third customer in a different shape. Somebody has to decide what stays project work and what becomes product.

I need someone to take the customer's decision problem and own it end to end: build the model on their data, and stay with it until their management trusts the result enough to act on it.

Our models decide what gets produced when, on which machine, and at what stock level. You build those models.

We came out of RWTH research, raised €2.8M with Vorwerk Ventures, and have customers running on our models today. Small team, Cologne office.

Responsibilities

• Build and maintain decision models for industrial production planning.
• Translate customer needs into quantitative models.
• Work directly with plant managers and controllers to understand and implement models.
• Clean and process messy industrial data.
• Collaborate with a small team to shape the product and make technical decisions.

Requirements

• Substantial experience in writing and operating production Python.
• Experience with optimization, simulation, or both.
• Ability to identify and clarify assumptions and constraints with customers.
• Experience working in a team with shared standards.
• The ability to make technical decisions independently and explain the trade-offs.
• German at C1 level or above, and fluent English.
• Existing work visa for Germany.

We Offer

• Ownership. The customer's model from the first conversation to the version running in production.
• Shaping the product. You make the call at the customer, and you argue the case for what belongs in the platform.
• Real-world impact. Customers plan their production on our models today, and they tell you what changed.
• Direct collaboration. Small team, no org chart. We work directly together. Weekly feedback, both ways.
• Compensation. Competitive salary plus a VSOP package reflecting your contribution and development in the role.
• Cologne plus customer sites. Most of the work happens at your desk in Cologne. Expect regular travel across the DACH region for the decisive conversations, though not every week.
• Your setup and everyday extras. Hardware of your choice · AI tooling budget · sports membership · Deutschland-Ticket.

About the Company

Circonomit is a forward-thinking company that has emerged from RWTH research and has secured €2.8M in funding from Vorwerk Ventures. Our mission is to revolutionize industrial production planning through advanced decision models. We are a small, dynamic team based in Cologne, Germany, with a strong focus on direct collaboration and real-world impact.