Customer Engineer

About OpenRouter

OpenRouter is the open AI routing and infrastructure layer that enterprises use to access, manage, and optimize the best large language models across providers—without lock-in, capacity constraints, or unnecessary cost. We power some of the most advanced AI teams in the world by giving them the flexibility to move fast, scale confidently, and stay future-proof as models evolve.

As enterprise adoption of AI accelerates, OpenRouter sits at the center of how organizations operationalize LLMs across research, product, and production workloads.

About the Role

As a Customer Engineer, you'll be the technical quarterback for OpenRouter's enterprise sales cycles. You'll partner with account executives to conduct discovery, deliver compelling demos, architect solutions, and overcome technical objections. You'll be the trusted technical advisor who helps prospects understand how OpenRouter solves their specific AI challenges.

This role sits at the intersection of sales, engineering, and product—you'll need to be equally comfortable in customer meetings, building demo environments, and providing product feedback to engineering.

This foundational individual-contributor role supports OpenRouter’s expanding APAC footprint. While the primary focus is pre-sales, you’ll also have additional Customer Support and Customer Success responsibilities as we build out a regional team.

What You'll Do

• Lead technical discovery calls to understand prospects’ AI/ML architecture, use cases, and requirements, and assess technical fit across API integration, model requirements, data residency, and compliance.

• Develop expertise in OpenRouter’s products and solutions, design customized demonstrations, and manage proof-of-concept environments that show how OpenRouter can solve prospects’ specific business problems.

• Partner with AEs throughout the sales cycle from discovery through close, including responding to proposals and technical questions and presenting at customer meetings, QBRs, and executive briefings.

• Address technical objections and competitive positioning, and support negotiations on technical terms, SLAs, and implementation timelines.

• Provide feedback to Product and Engineering on feature requests, competitive gaps, and market requirements to inform roadmap prioritization.

• Support technical onboarding and adoption for APAC customers and serve as the regional point person for account health, partnering with US-based teams to identify technical blockers and adoption risks.

• Assist customers with technical issues during APAC business hours, including hands-on API and code-level debugging and minimal reproductions, with handoffs to US-based Support and Engineering for deeper investigation or off-hours coverage.

What You Bring

• 5+ years as Sales Engineer, Customer Engineer, Solutions Engineer, or Solutions Architect in B2B SaaS/API/Infrastructure platforms.

• Strong technical background with hands-on experience in software development, APIs, or cloud infrastructure, including reading and debugging code and troubleshooting API integrations.

• Excellent presentation skills with the ability to explain complex technical concepts to varied audiences. Strong problem-solving skills and ability to architect solutions under pressure.

• Customer-first mindset with a genuine desire to help customers succeed and willingness to balance a primary pre-sales focus with technical adoption, account health, and initial support responsibilities as needed.

• Ability to operate autonomously as a foundational regional contributor while collaborating closely with a globally distributed team, including maintaining flexible overlap with US colleagues for planned training, team meetings, and important customer handoffs.

• Experience in a sales engineering role related to AI/ML technologies, LLMs, or machine learning platforms is a plus.