Forward Deployed Engineer

About Xata

Xata builds Postgres infrastructure for agentic workloads. We let teams spin up isolated database branches in seconds so every AI agent (and every developer) can safely experiment, test, and run workflows against production-like data without putting production at risk.

We've raised $35M (Series A led by Index Ventures and Redpoint), backed by founders like Guillermo Rauch (Vercel), Shay Banon (Elastic), and Neha Narkhede (Confluent), with years of runway ahead.

We're a remote-first team focused on making branching, data movement, and lifecycle management feel fast and dependable for modern software development.

What You'll Be Doing

We're hiring our first Forward Deployed Engineer to be the technical force behind how customers evaluate, adopt, and succeed with Xata. You'll partner with our Head of GTM across the deal cycle and then keep going past the handshake: leading technical discovery, designing proof-of-value engagements, and guiding teams through real migrations onto Xata.

This is a hybrid pre-sales and technical delivery role, and it is hands-on by design. You'll run the discovery, build the demo, write the migration tooling, and debug the production edge case with the customer. As our first dedicated FDE, you won't inherit a playbook; you'll write it: defining how we engage technically, what "good" looks like, and the tooling and patterns the next FDEs will run on.

In this role, you will

• Lead technical discovery with developers, platform teams, and AI-native companies. Get to the root of what they're actually trying to build, not just the feature they asked about.
• Design and run proof-of-value engagements that prove Xata against the customer's real data and real constraints, then own them to a clear technical outcome.
• Guide and execute database migrations onto Xata, using our open-source tooling (pgroll, pgstream) and building whatever is missing to make the path smooth.
• Build the assets that make us credible: demo environments, reference architectures, migration scripts, and integration patterns for branching, replication, and lifecycle management.
• Be the technical voice in the deal cycle. Partner closely with GTM, handle the hard technical objections, and earn trust with the engineers in the room.
• Embed with customers and write code with them. Outcomes over artifacts: a working integration beats a polished slide every time.
• Close the loop with Product and Engineering. You'll see what's breaking and what's missing before anyone else, and you'll turn that field signal into a sharp, prioritized stream of feedback to our Data Plane, Control Plane, and Frontend teams.
• Set the technical bar and build the function: the playbooks, demo infrastructure, and engagement model that the FDE team will scale on as we grow.

About You

• You are a strong, hands-on engineer who is genuinely energized by being in front of customers. Both halves matter.
• You are a generalist problem-solver. Full-stack, data plumbing, scripting, debugging, infrastructure: you reach for whatever the problem needs and figure out the rest fast.
• You are deeply credible with engineers and comfortable in the weeds of databases, SQL, APIs, distributed systems, and developer workflows.
• You thrive in ambiguity and high ownership. You walk into an unclear, high-stakes situation, find the real problem, and drive it from idea to something shipped and adopted.
• You have a bias to build. When something is missing, you make it, rather than filing a request and waiting.
• You communicate clearly in writing and work effectively in a remote, async environment.
• You're comfortable being the first and only person in this seat, building the function and not inheriting it.

Nice to Have

• Experience as a forward deployed, solutions, or sales engineer, or a consulting background with real delivery ownership.
• Experience with AI agents, agentic workflows, or AI-native developer tooling.
• Deep familiarity with PostgreSQL, database migrations, replication, or PostgreSQL-adjacent products.
• Background in open-source products or communities.
• Experience with both product-led, self-serve motions and sales-assisted ones.

Working at Xata

• We're stable. We've raised $35M and have years of runway.
• We're remote-first and have more than a decade of experience building distributed teams.
• We work asynchronously and keep meetings to a minimum.
• You'll have significant autonomy, ownership, and the opportunity to shape both the product and the company.
• We're open source at our core and deeply care about our developer community.
• Small team, large impact.
• Opportunity to shape the future of Postgres infrastructure in the agent era.
• Xata is female-founded and has an all-female board of directors.

What We Offer

• Meaningful equity in a company defining a new category.
• Competitive salary and a compensation package that reflects the role.
• A real seat at the table. You'll shape how we engage customers, not just execute it.
• 30 vacation days, plus local public holidays, and a culture that expects you to use them.
• Comprehensive health insurance.
• Remote-first, async-first. Work where you do your best work.
• Budget for a co-working space of your choice.
• Learning budget for conferences, courses, and books.
• Two company off-sites per year, with partners and children welcome.