Forward Deployed Engineer

Speakeasy, Inc

• $180K — $230K *
Enterprise Technology
5 - 7 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 5+ years of software engineering experience
  • Experience with APIs, developer platforms, or infrastructure products
  • Comfortable with customer-facing technical roles
  • Strong problem-solving skills in ambiguous situations
  • Ability to communicate complex technical concepts clearly

Responsibilities

  • Partner with Account Executives on technical opportunities
  • Lead architecture conversations with prospective customers
  • Design and deliver demos and pilot implementations
  • Translate customer requirements into deployment plans
  • Guide customers through implementation tradeoffs
  • Identify patterns across customer deployments and influence product direction
  • Write production-quality code and build internal tooling

Benefits

  • Medical, dental, and vision coverage
  • 401(k) retirement plan
  • Flexible Paid Time Off (PTO)
  • Regular company offsites
  • Work in a small team environment with high ownership opportunities
Full Job Description
The Role

Forward Deployed Engineers sit at the center of our customers, product, and engineering teams.

You will work directly with engineering leaders, platform teams, security teams, and AI initiatives at some of the most sophisticated companies deploying AI today.

This is not a traditional solutions engineering role. You'll operate across pre-sales, deployment, product feedback, and engineering, acting as the technical bridge between our customers and our platform.

You will partner closely with customers from initial evaluation through production deployment. You'll lead technical discovery, design integrations, solve architecture challenges, build proofs-of-concept, influence product direction, and help define how enterprises securely adopt AI agents and MCP infrastructure.

One week you may be helping a customer connect internal APIs to AI systems. The next week you may be designing access control models, debugging identity flows, implementing MCP governance, or working with our product team on entirely new capabilities driven by customer feedback.

You will often be the technical face of Speakeasy and one of the first people customers trust with mission-critical AI initiatives.

What You'll Do

Drive Technical Sales
  • Partner with Account Executives on strategic customer opportunities
  • Lead technical discovery and architecture conversations with prospective customers
  • Design and deliver demos, proofs-of-concept, and pilot implementations
  • Help customers evaluate how Speakeasy fits into their AI, security, and infrastructure strategy
  • Translate customer requirements into deployment plans and product feedback
  • Serve as the technical owner for complex opportunities from evaluation through production rollout
Deploy and Integrate
  • Lead customer implementations of the Speakeasy AI Control Plane
  • Design integrations with APIs, MCP servers, SaaS platforms, identity providers, and internal systems
  • Build prototypes, proofs-of-concept, and deployment architectures
  • Troubleshoot complex technical issues across customer environments
Partner With Customers
  • Act as a trusted technical advisor to engineering, platform, security, and AI teams
  • Translate customer requirements into technical solutions
  • Guide customers through architecture decisions and implementation tradeoffs
  • Drive successful production rollouts and long-term adoption
  • Build strong relationships with engineering leaders, platform teams, security teams, and AI stakeholders
Shape the Product
  • Identify patterns across customer deployments
  • Influence product roadmap and prioritization
  • Work directly with engineering to improve platform capabilities
  • Create reusable deployment patterns, documentation, and best practices
Build
  • Write production-quality code when needed
  • Build internal tooling and deployment accelerators
  • Create reference implementations and demos
  • Prototype new product ideas alongside customers
Who You Are

Successful candidates often come from backgrounds such as:
  • Founding Engineer
  • Forward Deployed Engineer
  • Solutions Engineer
  • Platform Engineer
  • Infrastructure Engineer
  • Technical Founder

You are comfortable moving between code, architecture discussions, customer conversations, and product strategy.
We are particularly excited if you:
  • Have 5+ years of software engineering experience
  • Have built or deployed APIs, developer platforms, infrastructure products, or security systems
  • Have experience working directly with customers in technical environments
  • Can quickly understand unfamiliar systems and navigate ambiguity
  • Enjoy solving open-ended problems with incomplete information
  • Have strong communication skills and can explain complex technical concepts clearly
  • Care deeply about customer outcomes
Bonus Points
  • AI agent, MCP, or LLM application experience
  • Identity and access management experience
  • Security, governance, or compliance background
  • Experience with enterprise software deployments
  • Startup or founding-team experience
What Success Looks Like

Within your first 6 months, you will:
  • Become a trusted technical advisor to both prospective and existing customers
  • Independently lead technical evaluations, pilots, and enterprise deployments
  • Help customers securely deploy AI agents, MCP servers, and internal tools at scale
  • Identify product gaps and influence the roadmap through direct customer engagement
  • Establish best practices for enterprise AI governance and agent infrastructure
  • Drive meaningful customer outcomes that directly impact company growth and adoption
Compensation & Benefits
  • $180,000-$230,000 base salary + meaningful equity
  • Medical, dental, and vision coverage
  • 401(k)
  • Flexible PTO
  • Regular company offsites
  • Offices in San Francisco and London
  • Small team, high ownership, significant impact

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