Forward Deployed Engineer (Founding Customer Engineer)
Clera · San Francisco · $140,000–$185,000 (stated in the posting)
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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