Forward Deployed Engineer (Founding Customer Engineer)
$140k - $185kClera
Job Description
Job Description
About the Role
We're an early-stage B2B SaaS company building self-improving AI agents that autonomously conduct and personalize product demos for software businesses. Our conversational AI lives on customers' websites, guiding visitors through tailored product experiences — helping companies explain and sell their software without human intervention.
We're looking for a Founding Customer Engineer — our first non-founder hire — to own every customer relationship and build the playbook that takes us from our current customer base to thousands. This is a high-impact, ground-floor role where you'll work directly alongside the founding team and shape how we grow.
What You'll DoTeach and coach AI agents to sell effectively — defining product tiers, buyer personas, and pricing conversation flows
Own customer relationships end-to-end, from onboarding through long-term success, continuously improving demo performance and product adoption
Serve as the voice of the customer — analyzing conversation logs and feedback to surface patterns and translate them into actionable product insights
Work directly with the CTO to turn customer feedback into shipped product features
Build automation workflows and systems (scripting, APIs, low-code/no-code tools) to scale the customer engineering function and eliminate repetitive manual tasks
Required:
0–3 years of experience in a customer-facing technical role in SaaS (e.g., Solutions Engineer, Customer Engineer, Sales Engineer)
Strong written and verbal communication skills; proven ability to lead customer onboarding sessions and product demos
Hands-on experience building automation workflows to scale customer engineering tasks (scripting, APIs, or low-code/no-code platforms)
Experience analyzing customer feedback and conversation data to identify patterns and inform product decisions
Ability to collaborate closely with engineering leadership and translate customer needs into product requirements
Experience configuring or coaching AI agents for sales contexts, including persona definition and pricing conversation design
Instinct for process — you spot repetitive work and immediately think about how to automate it
Nice to Have:
Background at a product demo, sales enablement, or go-to-market SaaS company
Experience at a high-growth early-stage startup or in a "zero-to-one" customer success/engineering function
Requirements:
Must be authorized to work in the United States — no visa sponsorship available
Must be able to work on-site in San Francisco, CA
Salary: $140,000 – $185,000 USD annually
Early employee equity opportunity at a well-backed seed-stage company
Direct collaboration with founders and outsized career growth potential
This is a full-time, on-site role based in San Francisco, CA . Remote work is not available for this position.
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