Forward Deployed Engineer

Speak to Kit; Greater London; On-site; GBP 100,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity (EMI-eligible)

Daily team lunch

Roof terrace

On-site showers

AI tooling budgets

Job summary

Speak to Kit is seeking a Forward Deployed Engineer in London. The role is full-time and on-site, five days a week, with a salary of £100,000 to £130,000 plus EMI-eligible equity. You will own strategic accounts end-to-end, from executive sessions to platform configuration and procurement conversations.

You’ll work directly with the CTO and senior stakeholders in a fast-moving seed-stage environment, shipping code as needed and shaping product direction.

Qualifications

• 2–5 years of demonstrable, high-responsibility experience.
• Real commercial track record: selling, negotiating, or owning outcomes you can point to.
• Based in central London or able to commute for a fully on-site role.
• Right to work in the UK.

Responsibilities

• Own strategic accounts end-to-end: adoption, expansion, and renewal.
• Run weekly working sessions with senior stakeholders, drive the agenda, and close the loop on outcomes.
• Configure the platform to fit each customer's specific workflows and requirements.
• Manage the async cadence across accounts: emails, follow-ups, status updates, and internal escalations.
• Translate customer needs into prioritised product feedback that shapes the roadmap.
• Hold your own in procurement, security review, and contract conversations.
• Ship code using Claude Code when a customer needs a UI fix, a small feature, or a bug resolved.

Skills

Commercial experience

Accountability

Stakeholder management

Tools

TypeScript

Node.js

React

Postgres

Job description

Overview

A seed-stage company in the AI risk and compliance sector is hiring a Forward Deployed Engineer based in London. The role is full-time and fully on-site, five days a week in central London. Salary is £100,000 to £130,000, plus meaningful EMI-eligible equity. Benefits include daily team lunch, specialty coffee, a roof terrace, on-site showers, and serious AI tooling and API budgets.

This role exists because the business is winning large, multi-year enterprise contracts faster than a traditional account structure can serve them. The person coming in will own a portfolio of strategic accounts end-to-end, from weekly working sessions with CSOs and compliance heads through to configuring the platform, shipping code, and holding the commercial thread across procurement and renewal. What makes this genuinely unusual is the scope: you are not supporting a sales team or escalating to engineering. You are the single point of contact for the customer and a direct partner to the CTO on product direction. The company reached seven-figure revenue within months of launch. The person who thrives here will be equally comfortable in a room with a VP of Risk and in a codebase, and will not need to choose between the two.

Key Responsibilities

• Own strategic accounts end-to-end: adoption, expansion, and renewal
• Run weekly working sessions with senior stakeholders, drive the agenda, and close the loop on outcomes
• Configure the platform to fit each customer's specific workflows and requirements
• Manage the async cadence across accounts: emails, follow-ups, status updates, and internal escalations
• Translate customer needs into prioritised product feedback that directly shapes the roadmap
• Hold your own in procurement, security review, and contract conversations
• Ship code using Claude Code when a customer needs a UI fix, a small feature, or a bug resolved

Requirements

Must-haves

• 2-5 years of experience doing something hard and demonstrable
• Real commercial track record: selling, negotiating, or owning customer outcomes you can point to
• Comfort being the single point of accountability when something is on fire
• Ability to hold the commercial and technical thread simultaneously, without defaulting to one side
• Based in or able to commute to central London for a fully on-site role
• Right to work in the UK

Nice-to-haves

• Background as a solutions architect, deployment strategist, or customer engineer at a technical enterprise company
• Experience at a Series A or B enterprise startup, particularly in GRC, cyber, or legal tech
• Domain knowledge in risk, compliance, or financial services
• Hands-on software development experience, especially TypeScript, Node.js, React, or Postgres
• Entrepreneurial signals: a failed startup, a side project, something shipped independently

What Success Looks Like

• Owning a portfolio of enterprise accounts with no dropped threads, commercially or technically, within the first three months
• Shipping code independently for customer needs by month three, using AI tooling rather than waiting on engineering
• Senior stakeholders at customer organisations treating you as their primary counterpart, not an account manager who escalates
• Product feedback you surface is specific enough to move the roadmap
• Accounts you own renew and expand

Team and Culture

• Small, senior team with founders from Palantir, Oxford, Stanford, and ETH, and engineers from Meta, Palo Alto Networks, Docker, and Google
• In-person by default, five days a week, with the pace and directness that comes with a company at this stage
• AI tooling is central to how the team works, not an add-on: Claude Code is used throughout
• Direct access to the CTO and genuine influence over what the company builds next

Challenges

• The hardest part of this role is staying technically sharp while being the person in the room with the CSO. Candidates who drift too far into relationship mode lose credibility with engineers; candidates who hide behind technical detail never close the loop commercially. You need to hold both, consistently, across a dozen-plus accounts
• You will be the single point of accountability when something goes wrong. There is no escalation path that takes the problem off your plate
• The pace is real. Seven-figure revenue in months means the business is moving fast and the expectations on account ownership are high from day one
• This is a seed-stage company. The structure, the processes, and the playbook are still being built. You will be part of building them, which is the opportunity, and also the reality