Forward Deployed Engineer
US$140,000 – US$185,000 / yr base salary
Posted 3 Jun 2026
Advertised as “Forward Deployed Engineer (Founding Customer Engineer)”
BranchFactor Summary
The original posting with the fluff stripped out
- Expected experience
- 0–3 yrs
- Management level
- Individual contributor
- Employment
- On-Site
- Contract
- Full-time
- Visa sponsorship
- Not offered
| Base salary | US$140,000 – US$185,000 / yr |
|---|
About the Role
This is a founding, first-non-founder hire at a seed-stage AI SaaS startup building conversational agents that run automated product demos for B2B go-to-market teams. You'll own every customer relationship and build the playbook for scaling from a small initial customer base to thousands. The role sits at the intersection of technical implementation, customer success, and product feedback — working directly with the CTO to shape what gets built.
What You'll Do
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Own end-to-end customer relationships from onboarding through ongoing success, including improving demo performance and driving adoption
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Teach and coach AI agents on product positioning, buyer personas, pricing conversations, and sales workflows
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Serve as the voice of the customer — analyze conversation logs and feedback to identify patterns and surface insights for the product team
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Translate customer feedback into actionable product feature requests in close collaboration with engineering and the CTO
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Build automation workflows and systems (scripting, APIs, low-code/no-code tools) to help the customer engineering function scale efficiently
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Define and document the customer engineering playbook from scratch
What We're Looking For
Required
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0–3 years of experience in a customer-facing technical role in SaaS (e.g., solutions engineer, customer engineer, technical account manager)
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Strong written and verbal communication skills; comfortable leading product demos and customer onboarding sessions
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Hands-on experience building automation workflows to scale customer-facing tasks (scripting, APIs, or low-code/no-code tools)
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Experience analyzing customer feedback and conversation logs to identify patterns and inform product decisions
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Ability to work cross-functionally and translate customer needs into concrete product improvements
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Experience coaching or configuring AI agents for sales contexts — defining tiers, personas, and pricing conversations is a plus
Requirements & Eligibility
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Must be authorized to work in the United States without visa sponsorship
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Must be able to work on-site in San Francisco, CA
Compensation & Benefits
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Base salary: $140,000 – $185,000 USD annually
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Early employee equity opportunity at a funded, early-stage AI startup
Location
On-site in San Francisco, CA. Remote and hybrid arrangements are not available for this role.