First Forward Deployed Engineer

Render; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

4 weeks of paid vacation

14 weeks parental leave

Long-term disability, life insurance,

401K plans

100% employer-paid medical coverage

Dependent coverage for medical

Monthly lifestyle stipend

Monthly cell phone and internet Subsid

Commuter benefits in Bay Area

Continuous learning benefits

Job summary

Render is seeking its first Forward Deployed Engineer to work hands-on with strategic customers. You’ll provide concierge-level technical partnership, balance two motions, and shape the FDE program for scale.

As the first FDE in Field Engineering, you will define the playbook, prove the model, and guide scalable deployment across customers leveraging AI tools and cloud platforms. You’ll own architecture reviews, onboarding, and long-term coverage with account teams.

Qualifications

• 8+ years in a hands-on, customer-facing engineering role.
• Strong software engineering fundamentals; you can write production-quality code.
• Deep experience with cloud infrastructure: containers, CI/CD, networking, autoscaling.
• Deep PostgreSQL and database expertise: schema design, performance tuning, replication, data migrations.
• AI fluency; familiar with LLM architectures and AI tools.
• Excellent communication with startup founders to enterprise teams.
• Self-directed and comfortable with ambiguity; can stand up a new function.
• Commercial instincts: understand how technical wins connect to expansion and revenue.

Responsibilities

• Work closely with Render's top accounts as their dedicated technical partner across architecture reviews, migration planning, and hands-on delivery.
• Run scoped onboarding intensives for high-growth startups, from intake to success criteria and hands-on work.
• Lead the database side of customer engagements, including Postgres architecture, performance tuning, and complex migrations from Heroku, AWS, and other clouds.
• Drive activation and expansion in strategic accounts by turning credits into durable production adoption and identifying expansion signals.
• Own the ongoing technical relationship for accounts: architecture reviews, roadmap sessions, incident follow-up, RCA, and escalation support.
• Build the FDE playbook: qualification criteria, engagement templates, success metrics, reference architectures.
• Provide high-signal feedback to product/engineering translating customer friction into product input.
• Collaborate with Account Managers and Customer Engineers to ensure smooth handoffs and long-term coverage.

Skills

Customer-facing engineering

Cloud infrastructure

PostgreSQL

AI/LLM experience

Production-quality code

Excellent communication

Self-directed

Commercial instincts

Tools

PostgreSQL

Job description

Render is seeking its first Forward Deployed Engineer to work hands-on with strategic customers. You’ll provide concierge-level technical partnership, balance two motions, and shape the FDE program for scale.

As the first FDE in Field Engineering, you will define the playbook, prove the model, and guide scalable deployment across customers leveraging AI tools and cloud platforms. You’ll own architecture reviews, onboarding, and long-term coverage with account teams.