Aman Reddy Senior Forward-Deployed Engineer
Washington, DC • forwarddeployed@gmail.com • +1 2025-7788
Profile Summary
- Senior Forward-Deployed Engineer with 9 years of experience across defense and intelligence customer programs in targeting workflows, ISR fusion, and mission ops, specializing in on-site delivery, custom applications, and classified data pipelines.
- Hands-on across core platform (Palantir Foundry), deployment target (AWS GovCloud), primary language (Python), pipeline framework (PySpark), front-end runtime (React), compliance regime (IL5), and a clearance (TS/SCI clearance), with strong fundamentals in strong engineering chops, deep customer empathy, and comfort in unusual operating environments.
- Deep expertise in on-site customer delivery, bespoke application development, messy-data integration, and adoption past go-live, using methodologies such as rapid in-field prototyping and user-in-the-loop iteration to ship working software on customer floors, not slideware.
- Pairs shoulder-to-shoulder with customer operators, analysts, mission leads, account managers, and core platform engineering inside embedded customer pods on-site, showing up to morning stand-ups, mission rehearsals, and field-to-product syncs with a pragmatic, ship-something-real mindset.
- Senior FDE who shares deployment craft and fosters a culture of solutions operators actually use and runbooks and handoffs that survive rotation through deployment retros and on-site clinics, while running FDE craft circles and deployment retros and authoring widely shared deployment playbooks and reusable ontology patterns.
Tools & Skills
- Languages & Runtimes:
- Python, TypeScript, Java, Go, SQL, Bash, React, FastAPI, Spring Boot, gRPC
- Platform & Product:
- Palantir Foundry, Ontology, Pipeline Builder, Workshop, Slate, Code Repositories, Object Explorer
- Cloud, Infra & Deployment:
- AWS GovCloud, Azure Government, Kubernetes, Docker, Terraform, air-gapped deployments, edge devices
- Data & Pipelines:
- PySpark, Airflow, Kafka, Parquet, Delta, geospatial (PostGIS, GeoServer), sensor and ISR feeds
- APIs, SDKs & Integrations:
- REST, gRPC, OAuth, SAML SSO, legacy SOAP, custom binary protocols, sensor SDKs, MQTT, file drops
- Security & Compliance:
- IL4, IL5, IL6, FedRAMP High, ITAR, HIPAA, SOX, cross-domain solutions, classified data handling, ATO support
- Domain & Workflows:
- Mission ops, ISR fusion, targeting cycles, clinical workflows, factory-floor MES, trade-floor surveillance
- Certifications & Clearance:
- TS/SCI clearance, Palantir Foundry Practitioner, AWS Solutions Architect Associate, Security+
Education
Carnegie Mellon University
B.S. in Computer Science
Work Experience
Palantir Technologies
Senior Forward-Deployed Engineer
- Embed on-site with customer teams at DoD combatant command and intel agency sites across defense and national security, rotating through 4 customer programs in 6-week on-site stints, sitting in the SCIF with operators and mission leads to scope real problems against current workflows.
- Build bespoke customer applications on top of Foundry as React and Workshop apps, wiring ontology objects, Slate dashboards, and Code Workbook notebooks into the daily flow of analysts, mission planners, and ops officers, shipping 11 production apps reaching 1,400 daily users across the customer's analyst and ops staff.
- Wire heterogeneous customer data into the platform via PySpark on Foundry pipelines, integrating 17 source systems (legacy mission databases, sensor feeds, file drops, classified APIs) and landing 2.3 TB a day into a cleaned ontology that analysts can actually query, with end-to-end freshness held under 4 minutes.
- Deploy and harden the stack inside air-gapped IL5 enclaves, working under IL5 and ITAR controls against a NIST 800-53 security baseline with the customer's ISSOs, and landing the platform across a cross-domain and edge nodes topology where standard SaaS assumptions break and every artifact ships on physical media.
- Run rapid in-field prototyping on a weekly working builds cadence with operators in the loop, hitting a first working prototype in 10 days from kickoff and absorbing 14 in-field iterations per deployment as the customer's real workflow surfaces under live pressure.
- Become a temporary domain expert in targeting and ISR fusion to scope work against real mission needs, mapping 9 operator workflows end-to-end (terminology, KPIs, decision moments, escalation paths) and lifting cycle-time KPIs on those workflows by 38% against pre-deploy baselines.
- Partner with account managers and customer leadership on renewals and expansion, with customer-visible mission outcomes as the renewal story, supporting $22M of account ARR across the embed portfolio and closing the year at 142% net renewal and expansion.
Booz Allen Hamilton
Software Engineer (Mission Systems)
- Trained customer operators and analysts on the tools we shipped through on-site bootcamps and runbooks, pairing with internal champions on the customer side, taking 240 operators through hands-on enablement and holding 84% 90-day active-use past the initial deployment.
- Closed the field-to-product feedback loop through biweekly field-to-product syncs with Product and Engineering leadership, surfacing platform gaps, workflow friction, and missing-capability asks from active customer deployments, and shaping 12 reusable gap patterns that promoted 6 bespoke FDE builds into core platform features within the year.
- Carried the security and operational discipline on every deploy through ATO packages and STIG hardening, handling classified data under IL4, IL5, FedRAMP High, and supporting 5 ATO audits across customer programs with zero finding-driven re-work.
- Worked closely with program managers, ISSOs, customer engineers, and core platform teams to coordinate cross-program tooling reuse and deployment standardization, classified-data escalations, and customer steering reviews, authoring 7 FDE playbooks that shaped the team's deployment standard and mentoring 3 incoming Forward-Deployed Engineers through their first on-site rotations.
