$180,000–$225,000
Founding Forward Deployed Engineer
Published · Updated
$180,000–$250,000New York, NYOn-site
Founding Forward Deployed Engineer who owns customer deployments from discovery through delivery, translating business goals and undocumented data into trusted AI-driven systems.
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View posting at CleraAt a glance
Posted base pay
$180K–$250KAbove the median
Median $190K
This job$180K–$250KTypical senior FDE payMiddle 50% of 1,491 postings$160K–$222KThe 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
- Coding
- Writes production code
- Builds for
- External customers
- Level
- Senior
- Role
- Individual contributor
What they ask for
Experience
Background
Tools
Visa
Less common in FDE jobs
- On-site36%
- Individual contributor or manager: Individual contributor45%
Share of US FDE postings that state each fact.
The job description from Clera
Posted by Clera on
About the Role
As the technical owner of customer deployments, you will work across data engineering, applied AI, and customer success to turn business goals and complex customer data into trusted systems with measurable outcomes. This founding role combines hands-on delivery with building reusable tools and frameworks that improve future deployments.
What You'll Do
- Work with revenue and operations leaders to understand business objectives and determine which problems are worth solving.
- Onboard customers end to end by scoping data access and mapping undocumented warehouse schemas to business concepts.
- Interview data and business teams to establish an ontology and resolve conflicting definitions before implementation.
- Build customer-facing signals and workflows, including the agent systems behind them, and diagnose and improve results when they fail.
- Agree on success measures upfront, then analyze and communicate the evidence of business impact.
- Turn deployment lessons into reusable validation frameworks, evaluation tools, and data mapping workflows.
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 the ability to navigate undocumented data warehouses and investigate inconsistent data.
- Experience clarifying conflicting business definitions through interviews and validation.
- Applied data science knowledge, including distributions, seasonality, validation design, and calibration.
- Experience building custom agent setups beyond default implementations and improving agent-driven workflows.
- Experience defining success metrics and building analytical cases that demonstrate customer outcomes.
- Careful, evidence-driven problem solving, comfort with ambiguity, and a willingness to own work from discovery through delivery. Founder experience is valued.
Compensation & Benefits
Salary range: $180,000 to $250,000 USD annually. Visa sponsorship is not available.
Location
On-site in New York City, New York, United States.
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