Forward Deployed Engineer (Founding Customer Engineer)

CLERA

San Francisco, USonsite$140k-$185k/yrPosted Jul 1, 2026
Posting intelligenceActively listedReposted 9×, possible evergreen/ghost posting

Skills

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About the role

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.

Compensation

This Customer Engineer role pays $140k-$185k/yr. Within typical range for customer engineer roles in United States.

Questions about this role

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