Forward Deployment Engineer - Oil, Gas & Chemicals
Travel: ≤70%
Location: Remote USA, CA or TX preferred
The Opportunity:
Picarro's Fenceline Monitoring Solution delivers continuous, real-time emissions intelligence to refineries and chemical plants. The technology works. The harder challenge — and the one that determines whether a pilot becomes a long-term program — is the early engagement: ensuring that Environmental, HSSE, and Operations teams understand the data in front of them, integrate it into how they work, and begin to operate differently because of it. That is the work of the Forward Deployed Engineer.
The FDE is embedded at customer sites during pilots and early-stage engagements. This role sets the benchmark for how Picarro unlocks value — changing the way operators and HSSE practitioners engage with real-time emissions data, moving from passive, retrospective review toward active, real-time decision-making. Success means customers take faster action on the signals that matter, reduce emissions, reduce risk, and build a more operationally excellent emissions management practice — with PicarroLink at the center of how they work.
WHO WE ARE LOOKING FOR
You are energized by change — specifically, by the challenge of shifting how an industry operates. You are not here to maintain the status quo or run a passive playbook. You walk into a refinery control room or HSSE office, earn trust quickly, and get people working differently. That is what drives you.
You are comfortable with emissions management technology. You understand emissions monitoring — detection, attribution, LDAR, real-time data and can speak credibly with the people using it. You are practical and hands-on in nature, and you are comfortable navigating a refinery or chemicals facility – e.g., by driving a survey vehicle, running real-time analytics in the field. You are energized by leading on the software side: Demonstrating how real-time emissions data and analytics fits into daily workflows, coaching teams through the shift from scheduled reporting to real-time signal-driven decision-making and making digital a natural part of how Environmental and Operations teams work. You bring energy to that. You make it feel achievable, not foreign.
You collaborate naturally with Customer Success and Product teams, because you recognize that your customer-facing observations are among the highest-quality inputs those functions receive. You translate adoption gaps into actionable product feedback, and you work with Customer Success to ensure that what gets tracked and built reflects real-world operational needs. You hold yourself accountable to customer outcomes — not to task completion.
You are also motivated by building something. The adoption models, training approaches, and workflow integration playbooks being developed right now will define how Picarro delivers at scale. The person in this role will shape them.
If that sounds like the work you have been looking for, we want to talk.
DUTIES
The Forward Deployment Engineer – Oil, Gas & Chemicals is responsible for driving adoption, enablement, and value realization at customer sites during pilots and early-stage engagements. Working with one customer at a time, the FDE ensures that Picarro's Fenceline Monitoring Solution and PicarroLink platform are embedded into Environmental, HSSE, and Operations workflows as an active, real-time tool — not a passive data archive. Delivery, commissioning, and hardware support are handled by Picarro's Operations and Delivery function; the FDE collaborates with that team but is focused entirely on the adoption and enablement work that determines whether a customer changes how they operate. Success is measured by the depth and consistency of customer adoption, the quality of value realized during the engagement, and the insights fed back to Customer Success and Product.
DUTIES INCLUDE
- Pre-sales and pilot engagement: Participate in pre-sales conversations, technical working sessions, and pilot design — bringing operational credibility to discussions about how PicarroLink integrates into a customer's existing workflows, data environment, and compliance obligations. Help define what success looks like and how it will be measured.
- Ongoing engagement with HSSE and Operations workers and leaders to build early alignment on objectives, establish relationships that support access and credibility during deployment, and ensure that pilot design reflects real operational constraints.
- User onboarding and training: Design and deliver structured, hands-on onboarding for Environmental, HSSE, and Operations personnel. Build confidence in PicarroLink — alerts, dashboards, event interpretation, and daily data review. Develop site-specific superusers who can train and sustain adoption across shifts and personnel changes, reducing dependency on Picarro's presence over time.
- Workflow integration — detect, attribute, resolve: Coach customer teams through the full real-time emissions management workflow: detecting concentration events, interpreting back-trajectory attribution, correlating mobile survey data with fenceline signals, and executing documented resolution. Drive this cycle into existing daily operational procedures and compliance practice, shifting customers from reactive, schedule-driven programs to proactive, signal-driven operations.
- Picarro Link adoption and digital leadership: Own the goal of consistent, meaningful daily use of PicarroLink across Environmental and Operations functions. Lead on the software side — configuring detection thresholds, alerts, and dashboards in collaboration with the customer team; demonstrating and embedding digital ways of working as the new operational standard. Make the shift to real-time feel natural and inevitable.
- Mobile survey enablement: Train customer personnel to operate the Mobile Survey Unit (UTV) for rapid fence-to-source investigation. Coach the use of meteorological and back-trajectory data to support defensible differentiation of on-site from off-site contributions. Build customer capability to run targeted field investigations independently.
- Customer Success alignment and joint governance: Work closely with the assigned Customer Success Manager to maintain a real-time view of adoption health, workflow integration status, and value realization. Contribute to Quarterly Business Reviews, success criteria tracking, and customer health reporting. Ensure Customer Success has the ground-level insight needed to manage the account effectively.
- Product feedback and customer-centric solution input: Translate direct field observations — workflow gaps, usability friction, unmet customer needs — into structured, actionable product feedback. Serve as a primary Voice of Customer input to the Product Owner and Industry Solution Director. Identify patterns across engagements that should drive roadmap prioritization, UX improvement, or new use case development. Partner with Product to ensure what gets built reflects how customers actually work.
- Adoption playbook development: Contribute to repeatable onboarding, training, and workflow integration playbooks that scale the FDE model as Picarro grows. Use AI tooling to document field learnings, structure templates, and accelerate knowledge transfer across engagements.
- Compliance context awareness: Maintain a working understanding of each customer's regulatory obligations — Refinery MACT, HON Rule, SSMP, and relevant fenceline action level frameworks — to ensure that PicarroLink configurations, workflow integrations, and reporting outputs align with compliance requirements and defensibility standards.
QUALIFICATIONS
- Bachelor's degree in engineering, environmental science, chemistry, industrial operations, or a related field.
- 5+ years of experience in industrial or field-based roles spanning emissions monitoring, environmental programs, industrial operations, or digital solution deployment — including meaningful experience leading on the software and digital side: training teams on platforms, driving adoption of data-driven tools, and embedding digital workflows into operational practice. This is not a hardware role; fluency with software-enabled ways of working is essential.
- Comfort working with real-time monitoring technology: familiarity with continuous emissions monitoring concepts — detection, attribution, LDAR, fenceline monitoring, VOC measurement — at a level sufficient to speak credibly with HSSE and Environmental practitioners. Understanding of how real-time data differs from passive or batch-based programs is important; depth in specific instrumentation is a plus but not the primary requirement.
- Demonstrated training and enablement experience: proven ability to deliver structured onboarding and hands-on training to technical and operational audiences; track record of building user confidence and sustaining adoption across diverse facility workforces and shift-based environments.
- Industrial site fluency: comfortable operating on refinery and chemical plant sites, navigating site safety requirements, work permits, and the cultural expectations of major industrial operators. At ease with Environmental, HSSE, and Operations stakeholders across all levels.
- Working knowledge of industrial data environments: familiarity with process control environments — DCS, PLCs, MODBUS, or equivalent — is extremely helpful for understanding the operational context in which PicarroLink sits and for credible conversations with plant technical teams.
- Strong interpersonal and communication skills: able to build trust rapidly with frontline operators and HSSE/Environmental leadership alike; effective at translating technical data into operational decisions; capable of influencing workflow change without authority.
- Motivated by industry change: genuinely energized by the challenge of shifting how the industry operates — not by maintaining existing practices. Drawn to making real-time, data-driven emissions management the new standard, and willing to do the patient, consistent work that organizational change requires.
- AI tooling aptitude: comfortable incorporating AI tools into daily work to improve documentation quality, structure feedback, and accelerate playbook development.
- Ability to travel approximately 70% of the time to our headquarters in Santa Clara, CA.
The company reserves the right to require random drug testing for all applicable positions.
The base salary range for this full-time position is $100-150k annually. Your base salary and title will be determined based on the location, experience, qualifications, skills, knowledge, level, and pay of employees in similar positions.
- Medical, Dental, and Vision insurance
- Flexible Spending Account (FSA) and Health Savings Account (HSA) plans
- Life, Short-Term Disability, and Long-Term Disability Insurance
- Flexible Vacation Policy and Paid Holidays
- Employee Referral Program
- Social events (summer picnic, holiday party, team lunches, etc.)
- On-site Health & Wellness programs (fitness challenges, outdoor boot camp, flu shots, etc.)
About Picarro:
We are the world's leader in timely, trusted, and actionable data using enhanced optical spectroscopy. Our solutions are used in various applications, including natural gas leak detection, ethylene oxide emissions monitoring, semiconductor fabrication, pharmaceutical, petrochemical, atmospheric science, air quality, greenhouse gas measurements, food safety, hydrology, ecology, and more. Our software and hardware are designed and manufactured in Santa Clara, California. They are used in over 90 countries worldwide based on over 65 patents related to cavity ring-down spectroscopy (CRDS) technology. They are unparalleled in their precision, ease of use, and reliability.
At Picarro, we are committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, sex, color, religion, national origin, protected veteran status, gender identity, social orientation, or disability. Posted positions are not open to third-party recruiters/agencies, and unsolicited resume submissions will be considered free referrals.
At Picarro, we strive to ensure that all individuals, regardless of their abilities, have equal opportunities. If you are an individual with a disability and require reasonable accommodation to complete any part of the application process or are limited in the ability or unable to access or use this online application process and need an alternative method for applying, please contact Picarro, Inc. at disabilityassistance@picarro.com for assistance.
