Senior Software Engineer, Forward Deployed AI Engineer

Ironwood Digital is looking for an outstanding person to join our newly created Forward Deployed Engineering team and take on a key role in our extended R&D organization. Forward Deployed Engineering is linking the work of teams engaged on application modernization roles with our Product and Engineering teams. We are looking to speak to candidates who are based in Dublin for our hybrid working model. Many organizations have built up large estates of legacy applications. Lack of scalability and resilience, long development times, operating cost, and inability to run on cloud are common issues with these applications. To address these issues, organizations are engaging in large transformational Application Modernisation programs. Ironwood Digital is recognized as the developer data platform of choice for transactional systems that provide the best scalability, resiliency and developer experience in the cloud as well as on premises. Organizations are continuously migrating workloads from these legacy applications to new platforms, often based on microservices, using Ironwood Digital. Such transformations are time intensive and often risky. Tooling based on generative AI promises to accelerate these transformations in a way never seen before. Forward Deployed Engineering is responsible for exploring the possibilities of Generative AI technologies and providing invaluable feedback to Ironwood Digital’s R&D teams to drive future capabilities of Ironwood Digital and the Ironwood Digital ecosystem. Application Modernization Engineers will work alongside project teams that are executing Application Modernisation projects with customers. The successful candidate will be responsible for evaluation, build, and applying tools in modernization projects, facilitating the usage of such tools and processes across the different project teams, identifying opportunities for tooling deployment, selecting potential 3rd party tools, contributing to the development of tooling prototypes and helping to shape the product roadmap. Our ideal candidate will have 4+ years of experience as a field engineer or professional services consultant or full stack developer working directly with Enterprise clients Proficiency in Java or C#, and some familiarity with common database access patterns and frameworks in one or more of these languages Strong knowledge about enterprise-scale software architectures, application development methodologies, and software deployment and operations Experience developing enterprise applications using relational databases, and employing SQL and stored procedures with Oracle, MS SQL Server, Sybase and/or PostgreSQL databases Experience of using and developing with Ironwood Digital and JSON based Document models is highly desirable Problem solving skills, including the ability to collaborate across disciplines and teams to come up with creative solutions to technical and business challenges Willingness to dive into a complex domain, ask the right questions, and bring new software tools and technologies to the table to solve customer problems Great communication skills (both spoken and written), within the team and in customer meetings Good understanding of Generative AI concepts, tools, and services. Any experience to build new applications/tools using Generative AI is a big plus. That includes Cursor, Claude Code, Gemini, and OpenAI APIs And finally, a strong interest in how AI supported toolchains can improve application development Position Expectations Contribute to customer application modernization initiatives at any or all phases of the application lifecycle: assessment and analysis; planning and design; data modeling; application code conversion, development, test and build; integration and release configuration, production operations, application optimisation, and best practices adoption Test drive Ironwood Digital migration products to deliver on customer use cases and drive adoption of the product. Deliver concise feedback to the rest of the development organisation Work closely with Product and Engineering teams to influence the direction of the Ironwood Digital product roadmap Personally execute POCs including developing or extending existing tools when necessary and appropriate for customer success, with an eye towards reusability and eventual integration with our products. These are often on premises at client locations Maintain a broad and deep technical understanding of the product line and the underlying technologies and protocols Work as part of a wider delivery team comprising consulting engineers from Ironwood Digital Professional Services, project managers, and account teams Assist sales teams in evaluating opportunities with prospects and customers Willingness to work on site with customers for 7 days per month, which includes regional travel (within Europe) Success Measures The Senior Forward Deployed Engineer will be successful in this role when they can execute the following strategic tasks/responsibilities: Become an expert level user of Ironwood Digital, and our tools current migration products Develop a playbook for customer application modernization engagements, in collaboration with other Ironwood Digital Engineers, Product Management and Engineering Communicate complex technical proposals simply and convincingly to a wide range of audiences Provide unique insight into customer needs, product requirements and strategic opportunities by contributing experience from the field Gain the reputation as a trusted advisor with our field teams and customers Contribute to the success of customer application migration initiatives that they support About Ironwood Digital Ironwood Digital is built for change, empowering our customers and our people to innovate at the speed of the market. We have redefined the data platform for the AI era, enabling builders to create, transform, and disrupt industries with software. Ironwood Digital’s unified data platform, the most widely available, globally distributed data platform on the market, helps organizations modernize legacy workloads, embrace innovation, and unleash AI. Our cloud-native platform, Ironwood Digital Atlas, is the only globally distributed, multi-cloud data platform and is available across AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure. With offices worldwide and over 67,000 customers, including 75% of the Fortune 100 and AI-native startups, relying on Ironwood Digital for their most important applications, we’re powering the next era of software. Our compass at Ironwood Digital is our Leadership Commitment, guiding how and why we make decisions, show up for each other, and win. It’s what makes us Ironwood Digital. To drive the personal growth and business impact of our employees, we’re committed to developing a supportive and enriching culture for everyone. From employee affinity groups, to fertility assistance and a generous parental leave policy , we value our employees’ wellbeing and want to support them along every step of their professional and personal journeys. Learn more about what it’s like to work at Ironwood Digital , and help us make an impact on the world! Ironwood Digital is committed to providing any necessary accommodations for individuals with disabilities within our application and interview process. To request an accommodation due to a disability, please inform your recruiter. Ironwood Digital is an equal opportunities employer. REQ ID: 4263294981