Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE)

Wilco; Lisboa; Hybrid; EUR 30,000 - 45,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Meal allowance

Office in Lisbon with hybrid flexibl e

Direct customer ownership

Job summary

Wilco is hiring for asoftware engineering role focused on taking real customer workflows from discovery through production. You will build end-to-end integrations across voice, messaging, booking systems, CRMs, and the Wilco platform, while collaborating with healthcare operators and technical teams in Europe.

You will write production code in Python, explore AI-driven journeys, and ensure reliable production quality. Strong English communication is essential, with hybrid Lisbon-based work.

Qualifications

• Shipped production software, backend and frontend experience.
• Strong Python fundamentals; reading unfamiliar code.
• Experience with TypeScript/React is useful.
• Experience integrating APIs and external systems.
• Good product judgment focusing on user problems.
• Clear, calm communication with technical and non-technical people.
• High initiative to drive unclear outcomes to completion.
• Rigorous AI-first workflow using coding agents.

Responsibilities

• Own customer deployments and workflows from discovery to launch.
• Collaborate with customer operators and technical teams to model real processes.
• Build full-stack features with Python and API integrations.
• Design AI voice and messaging journeys with prompts and rules.
• Diagnose production issues and drive restoration of customer outcomes.
• Decide what should be bespoke vs reusable and what belongs in core platform.
• Provide feedback to Product/Engineering on recurring needs and patterns.
• Contribute to core platform with proper tests and architecture.

Skills

Production software

Python

TypeScript/React

API integration

Product judgment

Communication

High agency

AI-first workflow

Professional English

Job description

Own the technical success of our customers after the contract is signed. Work directly with clinic operations teams to understand how they actually work, then design and ship the workflows they need across voice, WhatsApp, booking systems, CRMs and the Wilco platform.

About the role

Wilco is building the fastest path from lead to cash for retail healthcare. Our AI voice, WhatsApp, SMS and email agents convert leads into appointments, reactivate lost patients, confirm bookings and get unclosed quotes signed.

We work with healthcare groups across Europe. Every new customer brings real operational workflows, integrations and edge cases that need to work reliably in production.

A customer may ask Wilco to recover leads by voice, change how a journey handles a specific outcome, or connect to a system with incomplete documentation. You will take that from an ambiguous request to a reliable production flow.

This is a software engineering role, not presales or customer support. You will write production code, join customer conversations, debug real integrations and contribute reusable improvements to the core Wilco platform.

What you’ll do

• Own customer deployments and workflows from discovery through design, implementation, testing, launch and iteration.
• Work directly with customer operators and technical teams, turning messy real-world processes into clear system behaviour.
• Build full-stack functionality, with most backend work in Python and integrations across APIs, webhooks, data stores and third-party services.
• Create and evolve AI voice and messaging journeys, including prompts, tools, business rules, fallbacks and evaluations.
• Diagnose production issues across systems you do not fully control and communicate clearly until the customer outcome is restored.
• Make good calls about what should remain bespoke, what should become a reusable module and what belongs in the core platform.
• Feed recurring customer needs and failure patterns back into Product and Engineering so Wilco does not solve the same problem repeatedly.
• Contribute to the core platform with appropriate boundaries, tests and review rather than customer-specific shortcuts.
• Use coding agents such as Claude Code or Codex as part of your daily engineering workflow while remaining accountable for architecture, verification and production quality.

What you’ll bring

• Evidence that you have shipped production software, ideally across both backend and frontend systems.
• Strong Python fundamentals and comfort reading unfamiliar code. Experience with TypeScript or React is useful.
• Experience integrating APIs and external systems, including imperfect or poorly documented ones.
• Good product judgment: you look for the underlying user problem, not only the literal feature request.
• Clear, calm communication with technical and non-technical people. You should enjoy working with customers.
• High agency. You can take an unclear outcome, identify the missing information and drive it to completion.
• A rigorous AI-first workflow. You can show how you use coding agents to explore, plan, implement, test and review work, beyond generating code faster.
• Professional English.

Strong advantages

• Spanish or Portuguese. Most of our current customers are in Spain.
• Experience with voice AI, WhatsApp, telephony, healthcare workflows, CRMs or scheduling systems.
• Experience with LLM applications, agent tools, prompt and evaluation systems or workflow orchestration.
• Early-stage startup, consulting, implementation or other customer-facing engineering experience.
• Familiarity with Docker, cloud infrastructure, CI/CD and production observability.

Your first 90 days

In your first 90 days, you will have shipped a customer workflow to production, established a trusted working relationship with its users, and left the Wilco platform more reusable than you found it.

Your first year

Within 12 months, you will own several customer workstreams and will have converted repeated bespoke needs into tested platform capabilities that make the next deployment faster.

How we work

Wilco is office-first in Lisbon because this role depends on rapid collaboration with Product, Engineering and customer teams. There is flexibility to work from home on some days. We use AI deeply across engineering and value people who increase what they can accomplish with coding agents while maintaining a high bar for reasoning, security, testing and maintainability.

What we offer

• €30,000–€45,000 gross annual base salary.
• Flexible compensation with meal allowance.
• Office in Lisbon with hybrid flexibility.
• Direct customer and product ownership at an early-stage company.