Forward-Deployed Software Engineer – Catalyst Team

About KLAR Partners

KLAR is a Northern European private equity firm (~€2bn AUM) investing in business services and industrial technology across the Nordics, DACH, Benelux, and the UK. We own and operate 10+ portfolio companies with over 10,000 employees combined. 

Each runs on its own combination of ERPs, CRMs, field-service tools, and accounting systems, and each has workflows where the right piece of software would meaningfully impact how the business operates and how it performs financially. This role exists to find those workflows and build for them – backend, integrations, and AI where it earns its place.

The role

This is a key technical hire into KLAR’s Catalyst Team (KCT), KLAR’s value-creation team working hands-on inside portfolio companies on 4-8 week implementation sprints. As such, you will play a key role in defining the technical foundation: the stack, architecture, and engineering patterns that future deployments will build on.

What you will do

You will work hands-on inside portfolio companies with existing infrastructure, such as ERPs, CRMs, field service tools, and accounting systems, and build production software on top of them. The work spans backend development, systems integration, AI/LLM deployment, workflow automation, and cloud infrastructure.

You will work in focused 4-8 week sprints, shipping real software into production at the end of each engagement. This is a hands-on role with regular on-site work alongside teams across Northern Europe.

Day to day, this means:

• Work inside portfolio companies to understand workflows, then ship software that improves them
• Architect and build APIs and backend services that can integrate AI models to business systems
• Integrate with enterprise software such as SAP, Dynamics, Salesforce, and custom or legacy tools.
• Deploy LLM-based applications into production, such as RAG pipelines, agents, and copilots
• Automate manual workflows end-to-end, including document processing, classification, and elimination of data entry
• Set up and manage cloud infrastructure, CI/CD, and containerisation
• Turn prototypes into reliable production systems with proper error handling, logging, and monitoring
• Build internal tools and interfaces

What we are looking for

You have 5+ years of experience building and shipping production software, and a track record of delivering AI-powered features or products in real-world environments. Above all, you’ve owned production software end-to-end: built it, shipped it, and operated it long enough to know what production actually demands.

You’ve worked at the intersection of AI capabilities and business needs, and you’re comfortable being the only technical person in a room of non-technical operators. You can navigate imperfect systems and undocumented APIs, push back when the requirement is wrong, and ship pragmatically when it is right. You know how to turn messy problems into software that actually gets used. You find lifting performance in a real operating business as interesting as the technology that does it.

Python is the primary language, but strong engineering judgement and a pragmatic approach to problem-solving matter more than stack preferences. You’re comfortable across cloud environments like AWS or Azure, and you adapt your architecture and tooling to fit the situation.

Technical requirements

• Strong Python skills and comfort with at least one other backend language
• Experience designing, building, and deploying production APIs
• Solid SQL and database design skills
• Experience integrating with enterprise systems (ERPs, CRMs, or similar)
• Cloud infrastructure, CI/CD, Docker, and IaC fundamentals
• Working knowledge of networking fundamentals (VPNs, firewalls, on-prem to cloud connectivity)
• Experience with LLMs and AI tooling, including prompt engineering, RAG, and agents

Nice to have:

• Background in forward-deployed engineering, technical consulting, or early-stage B2B startups
• Experience in the PE/VC industry, or a strong interest in applying AI to private equity and business development
• Exposure to industrial, field services, or business services environments
• TypeScript/frontend basics
• Experience working directly with non-technical end-users

What we offer

• Shape a new function from the ground up inside a fast-growing PE firm with ~€2bn AUM
• Direct, measurable impact: the things you build show up in financial results
• Variety: no two portfolio companies are the same – field services, industrial technology, and business services, across different countries and systems
• A small, senior, and agile team with no bureaucratic overhead and big ambitions
• Competitive compensation with upside tied to portfolio value creation