Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE)

Location: San Francisco (on-site, 5 days per week)

Salary: $100,000 – $180,000

Employment Type: Full-time

Experience Level: 1–5 years in Solutions Engineering, Forward Deployed Engineering, or related roles

Contact – [email protected]

About the Role

We’re looking for a Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) who thrives at the intersection of technology, customer success, and product innovation. In this role, you’ll be both a strategist and a hands-on operator — building playbooks, processes, and relationships that define how we partner with technical customers for long-term success.

You’ll lead onboarding from day one, act as a trusted technical advisor, and help shape how our platform integrates with complex production environments. If you enjoy working directly with customers, debugging integrations, and driving measurable outcomes, this is your opportunity to make a real impact in a fast-growing, product-led team.

What You’ll Do

• Own onboarding end-to-end: Seamless handoffs from Sales; define success criteria, timelines, and milestones; track adoption and time-to-value.
• Be a trusted technical advisor: Guide customers on integrating our platform into CI/CD and production stacks (APIs, webhooks, authentication, SIP/Twilio flows, STT/TTS, LLM configs).
• Build scalable systems: Create repeatable playbooks, runbooks, health scoring frameworks, and QBR templates to drive retention and expansion.
• Influence product direction: Partner closely with Product and Engineering to submit data-backed feedback and shape the roadmap.
• Proactive account management: Monitor account health, identify risks, and execute expansion or recovery strategies based on telemetry.
• Hands-on problem solving: Reproduce customer issues, triage with engineering, and communicate resolutions clearly.
• Executive storytelling: Quantify ROI (quality, reliability, speed) and help craft case studies and success stories.
• Set the foundation: Help hire and mentor future Customer Success and Engineering team members as we scale.

About You

You’re someone who loves solving hard problems, talking to customers, and building systems that scale. You’re analytical, adaptable, and equally at home in a terminal window or an executive meeting.

You’ll Succeed Here If You Are:

• Customer-obsessed: You care deeply about impact and long-term partnerships.
• Technically fluent: You can read API docs, inspect payloads, debug logs, and script in Python or JavaScript.
• A clear communicator: You distil complex ideas for both executives and engineers.
• A builder: You create structure from ambiguity and bias towards action.
• Data-driven: You make decisions based on usage metrics, adoption trends, and business outcomes.

What You Bring

• 2+ years of experience in Customer Success, Solutions Engineering, FDE, Sales Engineering, or Technical Account Management within a developer-focused or SaaS company.
• Proven success managing onboarding through renewal and expansion for technical accounts.
• Hands-on experience with APIs, webhooks, SQL, and one or more scripting languages (Python or JavaScript).
• Comfortable using tools like Postman, cURL, dashboards, and log analysis for integration and debugging.

Nice to Have:

• Experience as an early or founding FDE/CS hire who built scalable playbooks and processes.
• Familiarity with LLM/AI agent tooling, observability, or testing frameworks.

What’s In It for You:

• High-impact ownership: Build the foundation of the Forward Deployed Engineering function.
• Collaboration: Work closely with founders and an exceptional, product-driven technical team.
• Career growth: Accelerated learning, leadership exposure, and real influence on product and process.
• Competitive rewards: Strong compensation, meaningful equity, and comprehensive health benefits.
• Culture: Fast-paced, collaborative, in-person startup environment with team lunches and shared wins.

This Role May Not Be for You If:

• You prefer rigid processes or heavily structured environments.
• You’re focused solely on relationship management without technical depth.
• You’re looking for a traditional 9–5 role with minimal change or challenge.

Ready to Make an Impact?

• If you’re passionate about solving real customer problems, thrive in fast-moving environments, and want to wear both the engineer and customer success hats, we’d love to hear from you.
• Apply today to help build the systems that power the next generation of reliable, intelligent technology.