Forward Deployed Engineer (Founding Customer Engineer)
Company websitegetclera.com (Clera, opens in new tab)
Base salary $140K to $185K
Employer-published annual base salary, USD. Advertised base range in San Francisco, CA
You apply on the employer's own site. Six Figure Work does not handle applications.
- LocationSan Francisco, CA
- WorkplaceOn-site
- Status at last checkSource accepting applications when checked
- Last checked (1 h ago) · observed since
About this job
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.
Source: Clera on Ashby · View original posting (opens in new tab)
This listingForward Deployed Engineer (Founding Customer Engineer)$140K to $185K
Founding Product Engineer$140K to $180K
Senior Solutions Engineer$140K to $180K
Machine Learning Engineer (Mid-Level)From $140K
Founding Full Stack Engineer$135K to $155K
Lead Research Engineer, Data Quality$130K to $225K
Software Engineer, Mid-Level$150K to $300K
Chart as a table
| Role | Published base |
|---|---|
| Forward Deployed Engineer (Founding Customer Engineer) (this listing) | $140K - $185K |
| Founding Product Engineer | $140K - $180K |
| Senior Solutions Engineer | $140K - $180K |
| Machine Learning Engineer (Mid-Level) | From $140K |
| Founding Full Stack Engineer | $135K - $155K |
| Lead Research Engineer, Data Quality | $130K - $225K |
| Software Engineer, Mid-Level | $150K - $300K |
Observed changes
- Began meeting the published-salary criteria
- First observed on the employer's board
- Observed since
- Employer-stated posting date
- 2026-06-03
Where this pay comes from
Location as the employer wrote it: San Francisco
- Base salary: $140,000 – $185,000 USD annually
- Method
- Employer text, read with fixed rules and re-verified
- Checked
- Rule set
- us-base-v2
The pay passage appears in the employer's own job text. Fixed, deterministic rules located it, and the passage below was checked against the stored copy of the posting.
What we verified
- The pay figures come from the employer's own listing, quoted exactly above.
- The pay is an annual base salary in US dollars with a minimum of at least $100,000.
- The role was publicly listed on the employer's job board when last checked.
We do not verify what the employer will actually offer, whether the employer is still recruiting for the role, or anything beyond what the employer published. Full methodology.