$155,000–$190,000
Forward-Deployed Engineer
Updated
$137,000–$207,000San Francisco, CA · New York, NY · +1 moreSan Francisco, CA +2RemoteSenior
This senior forward-deployed engineer embeds with strategic enterprise customers to deliver frontend migrations, performance improvements, and production AI systems.
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At a glance
Posted base pay
$137K–$207KBelow the median
Median $188K
This job$137K–$207KTypical senior FDE payMiddle 50% of 1,748 postings$160K–$220KThe work
Builds what the customer runs
Balance
- Mostly building
- Mixed
- Mostly pre-sales or support
Project stages
- Pre-sales (not covered)
- Proof of concept (not covered)
- Implementation
- Operations (not covered)
Travel Required, amount not stated
- Coding
- Writes production code
- Builds for
- External customers
- Level
- Senior
- Role
- Technical lead
What they ask for
Experience
Background
Tools
Less common in FDE jobs
- Company size: About 201–1,000 people19%
- Fully remote28%
- Company stage: Later private32%
- Individual contributor or manager: Technical lead47%
Share of US FDE postings that state each fact.
The job description from Vercel
Posted by Vercel on
About Vercel:
Vercel is the agentic infrastructure company, freeing people and agents to ship what's next. For more than a decade we've helped builders move from idea to production with speed, security, and exceptional developer experience.
Now we're scaling our products for both agents and people to ship and run software, built in the open and trusted by OpenAI, PayPal, Ramp, Supreme, and millions of developers worldwide.
About the role
As a Senior Forward-Deployed Engineer on the Professional Services team, you will embed with developer teams at strategic enterprise customers to lead frontend migrations, performance work, and production AI builds. Success looks like production code live in customer environments, customer teams able to extend it on their own, and a wider partnership with each account. This is a remote role open to candidates in the US, with occasional travel to customer sites.
What you'll do
- Build production AI agents, Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers, and agentic workflows with the AI SDK and the eve framework inside customer environments
- Lead migrations of legacy React, Vue, and other frontends to Next.js, including Pages Router to App Router, and automate the repeatable steps
- Audit customer codebases for performance bottlenecks and architectural anti-patterns, then deliver roadmaps with measurable improvements, including answer engine optimization (AEO) and search engine optimization (SEO)
- Architect and ship high-performance Next.js applications with App Router, Server Components, streaming, and incremental static regeneration (ISR)
- Run workshops and pair programming sessions so customer teams can maintain what you ship, and share repeatable patterns with Product and Engineering
What you need
- 6+ years of software engineering experience, including 2+ years in a customer-facing technical role (consulting, solutions architecture, forward-deployed engineering, or technical founder)
- Shipped production TypeScript applications on Next.js and React, including a legacy-to-Next.js migration, or built and deployed production LLM agents with human-in-the-loop patterns and sandboxed execution
- Built and deployed web applications, backend systems, or agentic workflows using AI coding tools such as harnesses, skills, and MCP servers
- Presented technical discovery findings and proposals to executives at enterprise customers, and mentored other engineers
Bonus if you
- Led an enterprise AI initiative that replaced a manual process or legacy system with a production agent
- Diagnosed and fixed Core Web Vitals issues (Largest Contentful Paint, Cumulative Layout Shift, Interaction to Next Paint) at scale
- Contributed to Next.js, React, or the AI SDK, or maintain a popular related library
The San Francisco, CA base pay range for this role is $137,000.00 - $207,000.00. This salary range is an estimate. Actual salary will be based on job related skills, experience and location. Pay ranges outside San Francisco may be adjusted based on employee location. The total compensation package also includes benefits and equity-based compensation. Your recruiter can share more about the specific pay range for your location during the hiring process.
Disclosures:
- Privacy: Please review our Job Applicant Privacy Policy for more information on how we handle your data.
- Equal Opportunity: Vercel is committed to fostering and empowering an inclusive community within our organization. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, gender expression or identity, sexual orientation, national origin, citizenship, age, marital status, veteran status, disability status, or any other characteristic protected by law. Vercel encourages everyone to apply for our available positions, even if they don't necessarily check every box on the job description.
About Vercel
Agentic infrastructure and frontend cloud for teams building, shipping, and operating web apps and AI agents.
Series F · 500–1000 people
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