Forward Deployed Engineer

Openhands; Northern (KY); Hybrid; USD 175,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Remote-first with flexible hours

Full US health, vision, and dental

Unmetered PTO + holidays

Equity and bonus

Job summary

OpenHands is seeking a Forward-Deployed Engineer (Post Sales) to deploy OpenHands Enterprise on customer infrastructure and to build integrations that accelerate adoption across teams.

You will work directly with customers, install and operate containerized workloads, and craft agentic use cases while enabling scalable adoption through demos, workshops, and onboarding. This role emphasizes collaboration, execution, and hands-on engineering in production environments.

Qualifications

• 5+ years professional experience as a software engineer or in a deeply customer-embedded technical role.
• Strong proficiency in at least one backend or systems language (Python preferred), with comfort building operational tooling and debugging production systems.
• Hands-on experience deploying and operating containerized workloads in customer or self-hosted environments - Kubernetes and Helm specifically, plus the networking, certificates, and secrets management that real on-prem installs require.
• Experience working directly with customers in production or high-stakes environments, with the judgment to navigate ambiguity, communicate complex tradeoffs clearly, and support teams adopting new tools.
• Familiarity with modern developer workflows: CI/CD, Git-based collaboration, and developer tooling.
• Bonus: experience with identity and access patterns (OAuth, OIDC, SSO), MCP, agent or LLM tooling, or OEM/platform integrations; background in field engineering, pre-sales, or developer relations; familiarity with AI developer tools (OpenHands, Claude Code, Copilot, Cursor)

Responsibilities

• Own technical success for your accounts from first proof-of-concept through production deployment, including hands-on installation of OpenHands Enterprise on customer-managed infrastructure
• Build custom integrations that unblock adoption; agent-identity and OAuth delegation, connections to systems like GitHub and Atlassian, and MCP-based connectors
• Develop agentic use cases with customers (CVE remediation, code review, Issue-to-PR, SDLC automation), including building skills and packaging them as plugins
• Run enablement that scales adoption: onboarding, office hours, demos, and on-site workshops
• Debug across services, containers, Kubernetes, networking, and CI/CD to unblock customers quickly
• Surface patterns and gaps from the field to inform Product and Engineering, and produce reusable artifacts such as demos, docs, and playbooks

Skills

Python

Kubernetes

Helm

CI/CD

Git workflows

OAuth / SSO

Tools

GitHub

Atlassian Suite

Docker

Job description

Who We Are

We're building OpenHands, an open-source AI platform that helps engineering teams accelerate development, automate workflows, and bring AI-assisted coding into production environments.

As a Forward-Deployed Engineer (Post Sales), you'll work directly with customers to deploy OpenHands, build integrations, and shape how AI-assisted development is used. You'll operate as both a hands-on engineer and a trusted technical advisor, turning real-world usage into product improvements that help developers everywhere move faster.

What You’ll Do

• Own technical success for your accounts from first proof-of-concept through production deployment, including hands-on installation of OpenHands Enterprise on customer-managed infrastructure

• Build custom integrations that unblock adoption; agent-identity and OAuth delegation, connections to systems like GitHub and Atlassian, and MCP-based connectors

• Develop agentic use cases with customers (CVE remediation, code review, Issue-to-PR, SDLC automation), including building skills and packaging them as plugins

• Run enablement that scales adoption: onboarding, office hours, demos, and on-site workshops

• Debug across services, containers, Kubernetes, networking, and CI/CD to unblock customers quickly

• Surface patterns and gaps from the field to inform Product and Engineering, and produce reusable artifacts such as demos, docs, and playbooks
  

What You Bring

• 5+ years professional experience as a software engineer or in a deeply customer-embedded technical role

• Strong proficiency in at least one backend or systems language (Python preferred), with comfort building operational tooling and debugging production systems

• Hands-on experience deploying and operating containerized workloads in customer or self-hosted environments - Kubernetes and Helm specifically, plus the networking, certificates, and secrets management that real on-prem installs require

• Experience working directly with customers in production or high-stakes environments, with the judgment to navigate ambiguity, communicate complex tradeoffs clearly, and support teams adopting new tools

• Familiarity with modern developer workflows: CI/CD, Git-based collaboration, and developer tooling

• Bonus: experience with identity and access patterns (OAuth, OIDC, SSO), MCP, agent or LLM tooling, or OEM/platform integrations; background in field engineering, pre-sales, or developer relations; familiarity with AI developer tools (OpenHands, Claude Code, Copilot, Cursor)
  

Why Join OpenHands

• Competitive compensation: $175,000 - $240,000 base salary, plus equity and bonus

• Remote-first with flexible hours (core hours 12-4pm ET | 4-8pm UTC)

• Fully covered U.S. health, vision, and dental insurance

• Unmetered PTO + holidays

• Collaborate with world-class engineers, product builders, and AI researchers

• Real influence over product direction as you represent the voice of customers running OpenHands in production

• A culture built on kindness, candor, autonomy, and learning
  

We Welcome All Applicants

We're committed to building an inclusive, supportive environment where everyone can thrive. We celebrate diversity and do not discriminate based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, or any other protected characteristic. If you're passionate about building great developer tools and excited about the future of AI-powered software development, we'd love to hear from you.