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Clera

Founding Forward Deployed Engineer

Published · Updated

$180,000–$250,000New York, NYOn-site

Own end-to-end customer deployments for an early-stage SaaS company, connecting customer business goals and data to trusted systems with measurable impact.

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View posting at Clera

At a glance

Posted base pay

$180K–$250KAbove the median

The work

Builds what the customer runs

Balance

  1. Mostly building
  2. Mixed
  3. Mostly pre-sales or support

Project stages

  1. Pre-sales (not covered)
  2. Proof of concept (not covered)
  3. Implementation
  4. Operations (not covered)
Coding
Writes production code
Builds for
External customers
Level
Senior
Role
Technical lead

What they ask for

Experience

  • 3+ yearsTechnical, customer-facing role (e.g. forward deployed engineering, solutions engineering, or software engineering with substantial customer exposure)

Background

  • Software engineering
  • Solutions and customer engineering
  • Forward deployed engineering

Tools

  • SQL
  • dbt
  • data warehouses
  • custom agent configurations
  • validation frameworks
  • evaluation harnesses
  • data science
  • machine learning

Visa

  • No visa sponsorship

Less common in FDE jobs

  • On-site37%
  • Individual contributor or manager: Technical lead45%

Share of US FDE postings that state each fact.

The job description from Clera

Posted by Clera on

About the Role

Own customer deployments for an early-stage SaaS company, from understanding business goals and connecting to data through delivering a trusted system with measurable impact. The role brings together data engineering, applied AI, and customer success, while also building reusable tools and practices to improve future deployments.

What You'll Do

  • Partner with revenue and operations leaders to understand business objectives and identify valuable problems to solve.
  • Lead customer onboarding, scope data access, and map undocumented warehouse schemas to business concepts.
  • Interview customer data and business teams to reconcile conflicting definitions and validate the resulting ontology.
  • Build customer-facing signals and workflows, including custom agent configurations, and troubleshoot their outputs.
  • Agree on success measures, analyze results, and build a credible evidence-based case for customer impact.
  • Develop reusable validation frameworks, evaluation harnesses, and mapping tools to accelerate deployments.

What We're Looking For

  • At least 3 years of experience in a technical, customer-facing role such as forward deployed engineering, solutions engineering, or software engineering with substantial customer exposure.
  • Strong SQL and dbt skills, with deep familiarity navigating data warehouses and undocumented schemas.
  • A quantitative degree in statistics, mathematics, computer science, or a comparable field, plus a foundation in data science or machine learning.
  • Applied statistics and modeling experience, including distributions, seasonality, validation design, and calibration.
  • Experience creating custom agent setups beyond default implementations and building analytical cases tied to customer outcomes.
  • Ability to resolve inconsistent business definitions through interviews and data validation, with careful attention to detail and comfort working through ambiguity.
  • Founder experience or a non-traditional path into engineering is a plus.

Compensation & Benefits

Base salary is $180,000 to $250,000 USD annually. Visa sponsorship is not available.

Location

On-site in New York City, United States.

View posting at Clera

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Pay and conditions

Posted pay
$180,000–$250,000
Pay details

Base salary is $180,000 to $250,000 USD annually. Visa sponsorship is not available.

Location
New York, NY
Work arrangement
On-site
Remote work restrictions
On-site in New York City, United States
Employment type
Full-time
Visa sponsorship
Not available
Experience requirements
  • 3+ years: Technical, customer-facing role (e.g. forward deployed engineering, solutions engineering, or software engineering with substantial customer exposure) (required)

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