Forward Deployed Engineer

Guava; Los Angeles (CA); On-site; USD 110,000 - 140,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

401(k) match

Gym membership

Flexible PTO

Job summary

Guava in Los Angeles seeks a Forward Deploy Engineer to be the technical voice on sales calls, design POCs, and guide prospects through evaluations. You will co-architect integrations, ship reference implementations, and travel to client sites as needed.

The role blends engineering work with high-impact customer interactions and requires startup‑style ownership. You’ll work with Python, TypeScript, Go, or Java, enjoy live troubleshooting with customers, and bring proactive problem-solving to

Qualifications

• Production code shipped in real-world projects or internships with ownership.
• Strong fundamentals in Python/TypeScript/Go/Java with ability to learn new stacks quickly.
• Comfortable writing and debugging code in front of customers and explaining decisions.

Responsibilities

• Be on sales calls as the technical voice — build rapport with developer buyers and give confidence to move forward.
• Run independent conversations with prospects to push deal flow — don’t wait for an AE to loop you in.
• Own the technical win in pre-sales evaluations: design POCs, guide decisions, and close the technical side of the deal.
• Build compelling demos — video walkthroughs or live phone number demonstrations.
• Scope professional services work and clarify deployment end-to-end.

Skills

Python

TypeScript

Go

Java

LLM integration

Live troubleshooting

Communication

Problem-solving

Job description

ABOUT GUAVA

Guava is the voice platform built for regulated industries — the calls that have to be right. Trained on 10B live agent minutes and in regulated production since 2013, Guava gives companies a single, compliant system for every second of a call. From healthcare and banking to insurance, BPOs, and tech-native platforms, Guava powers mission-critical voice workflows for organizations where compliance and call resolution are non-negotiable.

We are a fast-growing AI company with deep engineering roots — Stanford, MIT, NASA — and we are building the team to match. That starts with getting the right people in the door.

THE ROLE

Forward Deploy Engineers at Guava sit at the intersection of engineering, product, and go-to-market. You will spend meaningful time writing code, debugging integrations, and unblocking deployments — but this is not a heads-down engineering role. You will be on every sales call we run, building relationships with prospects, helping move deals forward, and solving problems live with customers. The technical work and the people work are equally important here.

The best FDEs are engineers who light up in a room. You will be the person a prospect calls when they are stuck, the voice that builds confidence in a deal, and the one who turns a skeptical technical buyer into a champion. That means proactively driving conversations forward, not waiting to be pulled in. In a given week you might run a demo call, close the technical side of an evaluation, co-architect an integration on-site, and ship a reference implementation — then start the cycle over. We want someone who finds all of that energizing.

WHAT YOU’LL DO

Pre-Sales & Technical Evaluation

• Be on sales calls as the technical voice — build rapport with developer buyers, answer hard questions live, and give prospects the confidence to move forward
• Run independent conversations with prospects to push deal flow — you are not waiting for an AE to loop you in
• Own the technical win in pre-sales evaluations: design POCs, guide prospects through their decision, and close the technical side of the deal
• Build compelling demos — video walkthroughs or live phone numbers prospects can actually call
• Scope professional services work and help prospects understand what deployment looks like end to end

Customer Deployments & Integrations

• Co-architect integrations on-site with customer engineering teams across healthcare, banking, insurance, BPOs, and tech-native platforms
• Debug and unblock customer deployments, traveling to client sites when needed
• Act as the primary technical contact for customers during and after deployment
• Surface time-sensitive customer feedback to product engineering and help prioritize fixes

Engineering & Internal Tooling

• Ship reusable patterns, cookbooks, and reference implementations that the next ten customers can build on top of
• Build internal tooling for the Revenue team — for example, agentic AI workflows to help increase pipeline
• Contribute to Guava’s developer experience by identifying and closing gaps in docs, SDKs, and integration patterns

WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR

• Production code shipped at a real company, in an internship with genuine ownership, or on an open-source or side project with actual adoption
• Fluent in at least one modern language (Python, TypeScript, Go, Java, Ruby); we work in Python but strong fundamentals beat any specific stack
• Comfortable writing and debugging code in front of people — pairing with customers, live troubleshooting, explaining decisions as you make them
• Built something real with an LLM: structured outputs, tool calling, LLM integration in a production workflow
• Genuinely energized by sales conversations — you want to be in the room, not just available to answer technical questions
• Strong communicator who can read a room, adjust for the audience, and move a conversation forward with confidence
• A natural problem-solver with customers — you think on your feet, stay calm under pressure, and treat a stuck deployment as a puzzle, not a burden
• Proactive by default — you follow up, you push deals forward, you do not wait to be asked
• 1–3 years post-undergrad; substantial internship experience counts and more experience is welcomed
• Based in or willing to commute to downtown Los Angeles; full-time, in-office
• Willing to travel periodically — conferences every one to three months, occasional customer site visits

NICE TO HAVES

• Prior experience in Solutions Engineering, Deployed Engineering, or Forward-Deployed Engineering at a developer-facing API company (Stripe, Twilio, Plaid, Vercel, or similar)
• Production experience with voice AI: telephony, ASR, TTS, or agentic conversation patterns
• Experience deploying LLM-based or agent-based systems in production
• Open-source contributions to AI infrastructure projects
• Working familiarity with cloud deployments (AWS, GCP, or Azure)

WHY GUAVA

• Work at the intersection of engineering and go-to-market — a rare combination that compounds fast
• Real ownership from day one in a role that is wide on purpose
• Direct access to senior engineering and leadership; no layers between you and the people who build the product
• A technical product with a decade of regulated production proof — you will never struggle to establish credibility with a customer
• Full health, dental, and vision coverage, employer 401(k) match, gym membership, and flexible PTO
• Salary Range: $110,000 – $140,000 depending on experience and qualification

Guava is an equal opportunity employer. We welcome applicants of all backgrounds and are committed to building a diverse and inclusive team.