$115,000–$200,000
Forward Deployed Engineer (Founding Customer Engineer)
Updated
$140,000–$185,000San Francisco, CAOn-site
Founding customer-facing engineer at a seed-stage AI SaaS startup, owning customer relationships from onboarding through adoption while building the customer engineering function from scratch.
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View posting at CleraAt a glance
Posted base pay
$140K–$185KBelow the median
Median $190K
This job$140K–$185KTypical senior FDE payMiddle 50% of 1,491 postings$160K–$222KThe work
Integrates and configures it
Balance
- Mostly building
- Mixed
- Mostly pre-sales or support
Project stages
- Pre-sales (not covered)
- Proof of concept (not covered)
- Implementation
- Operations
- Coding
- Configuration only
- Builds for
- External customers
- Level
- Senior
- Role
- Individual contributor
What they ask for
Experience
Background
Tools
Visa
Less common in FDE jobs
- Coding work: Configuration only13%
- 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
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
- Own end-to-end customer relationships from onboarding through ongoing success, including improving demo performance and driving adoption
- Teach and coach AI agents on product positioning, buyer personas, pricing conversations, and sales workflows
- Serve as the voice of the customer — analyze conversation logs and feedback to identify patterns and surface insights for the product team
- Translate customer feedback into actionable product feature requests in close collaboration with engineering and the CTO
- Build automation workflows and systems (scripting, APIs, low-code/no-code tools) to help the customer engineering function scale efficiently
- Define and document the customer engineering playbook from scratch
What We're Looking For
Required
- 0–3 years of experience in a customer-facing technical role in SaaS (e.g., solutions engineer, customer engineer, technical account manager)
- Strong written and verbal communication skills; comfortable leading product demos and customer onboarding sessions
- Hands-on experience building automation workflows to scale customer-facing tasks (scripting, APIs, or low-code/no-code tools)
- Experience analyzing customer feedback and conversation logs to identify patterns and inform product decisions
- Ability to work cross-functionally and translate customer needs into concrete product improvements
- Experience coaching or configuring AI agents for sales contexts — defining tiers, personas, and pricing conversations is a plus
Requirements & Eligibility
- Must be authorized to work in the United States without visa sponsorship
- Must be able to work on-site in San Francisco, CA
Compensation & Benefits
- Base salary: $140,000 – $185,000 USD annually
- 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.
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