Forward Deployed Engineer (Founding Customer Engineer)

Clera

$140K — $185K *
Enterprise Technology
Less than 5 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 0-3 years in a customer-facing technical role in SaaS (e.g., Solutions Engineer, Customer Engineer, Sales Engineer)
  • Strong written and verbal communication skills for effective onboarding and demos
  • Experience building automation workflows (scripting, APIs, low-code/no-code)
  • Ability to analyze customer feedback and conversation data for insights
  • Collaborative approach to translate customer needs into product requirements
  • Experience in configuring or coaching AI agents in sales contexts
  • Instinct for identifying and automating repetitive tasks

Responsibilities

  • Teach and coach AI agents on effective selling practices
  • Own customer relationships from onboarding to long-term success
  • Analyze customer feedback to derive actionable insights
  • Collaborate with the CTO to refine product features based on customer input
  • Build automation workflows to scale customer engineering and minimize manual tasks

Benefits

  • Early employee equity opportunity in a well-backed seed-stage company
  • Direct collaboration with founders for increased career growth potential
Full Job Description
About the Role

We're an early-stage B2B SaaS company building self-improving AI agents that autonomously conduct and personalize product demos for software businesses. Our conversational AI lives on customers' websites, guiding visitors through tailored product experiences - helping companies explain and sell their software without human intervention.

We're looking for a Founding Customer Engineer - our first non-founder hire - to own every customer relationship and build the playbook that takes us from our current customer base to thousands. This is a high-impact, ground-floor role where you'll work directly alongside the founding team and shape how we grow.
What You'll Do
  • Teach and coach AI agents to sell effectively - defining product tiers, buyer personas, and pricing conversation flows
  • Own customer relationships end-to-end, from onboarding through long-term success, continuously improving demo performance and product adoption
  • Serve as the voice of the customer - analyzing conversation logs and feedback to surface patterns and translate them into actionable product insights
  • Work directly with the CTO to turn customer feedback into shipped product features
  • Build automation workflows and systems (scripting, APIs, low-code/no-code tools) to scale the customer engineering function and eliminate repetitive manual tasks
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, Sales Engineer)
  • Strong written and verbal communication skills; proven ability to lead customer onboarding sessions and product demos
  • Hands-on experience building automation workflows to scale customer engineering tasks (scripting, APIs, or low-code/no-code platforms)
  • Experience analyzing customer feedback and conversation data to identify patterns and inform product decisions
  • Ability to collaborate closely with engineering leadership and translate customer needs into product requirements
  • Experience configuring or coaching AI agents for sales contexts, including persona definition and pricing conversation design
  • Instinct for process - you spot repetitive work and immediately think about how to automate it

Nice to Have:
  • Background at a product demo, sales enablement, or go-to-market SaaS company
  • Experience at a high-growth early-stage startup or in a "zero-to-one" customer success/engineering function

Requirements:
  • Must be authorized to work in the United States - no visa sponsorship available
  • Must be able to work on-site in San Francisco, CA
Compensation & Benefits
  • Salary: $140,000 - $185,000 USD annually
  • Early employee equity opportunity at a well-backed seed-stage company
  • Direct collaboration with founders and outsized career growth potential
Location

This is a full-time, on-site role based in San Francisco, CA. Remote work is not available for this position.

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