Forward Deployed Engineer

Clarasight; Oregon; Hybrid; USD 140,000 - 200,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity in an early-stage company

Full medical, dental, and vision

$500 sustainability benefit

Direct exposure to leadership team

Scope to grow in scope, responsibility

Job summary

Clarasight is seeking a Forward Deployed Engineer to join the Engineering team and spend most of their time in pre-sales and strategic customer engagements in the United States. You will lead technical discovery, architect integrations and AI workflows during live sales cycles, and contribute to Clarasight's full-stack production codebase.

You will turn customer-specific solutions into scalable product capabilities, work with data across travel, financial, and expense domains, and help drive

Qualifications

• 5–8+ years in software engineering, data engineering, or technical consulting.
• Experience delivering in ambiguous, high-ownership environments.
• Ability to contribute to production codebases and work with messy enterprise data.
• Strong communication across technical and non-technical audiences.

Responsibilities

• Own the technical relationship from discovery through contract close.
• Translate business problems into working prototypes and clear technical narratives.
• Lead technical discovery with prospects and customers.

Skills

Software engineering

Data engineering

Technical consulting

Production code

Job description

About Us

Join us in building the leading AI-Powered Mission Control for Corporate Travel. Some of the world's most recognizable companies, representing over $4T in market value, rely on Clarasight's software to reduce risks, save costs, protect revenues, and manage emissions aligned with business objectives and sustainability goals.

About You

• You thrive at the intersection of deep technical craft and high-stakes customer engagement. This isn't a solutions engineering role where you demo software and hand off tickets - you want to be embedded in complex enterprise environments, building real things during live sales cycles and turning what you learn into durable product capabilities.
• You contribute to production codebases without hesitation, and you've spent meaningful time wrangling messy enterprise data. You communicate clearly across audiences, move fast, and don't need your name on things - you need them to work.
• You have strong opinions about where AI genuinely creates advantage and where it's noise, and you're energized by turning customer-specific solutions into scalable product.

About the Role

• We are seeking a Forward Deployed Engineer to sit within Engineering but spend most of their time in pre-sales and strategic customer engagements, working closely with Sales and Customer Success.
• This is a build-and-own role: you will lead technical discovery with prospects and customers, architect and prototype integrations and AI workflows during live sales cycles, reconcile messy low-quality enterprise datasets, and contribute directly to Clarasight's full-stack production codebase.
• Your job is to turn customer-specific solutions into scalable product capabilities - the best things you build shouldn't stay custom.

Key Responsibilities

Customer Engineering

• Own the technical relationship from first discovery call through contract close.
• Collaborate with the data science team to translate ambiguous, high-pressure business problems into working prototypes and clear technical narratives that build trust and accelerate deals.
• Lead technical discovery with prospects and customers.

Data & Systems

• Design and build pipelines across fragmented travel, financial, and expense systems.
• Get hands-on with messy, low-quality enterprise data: reconciling, validating, and shaping it into something reliable.
• Build frameworks that last, not workarounds that don't.

AI Application

• Apply AI where it genuinely creates advantage: enrichment, anomaly detection, forecasting, automation.
• Have strong opinions about where it helps and where it's noise.
• Turn experiments into repeatable, scalable workflows.

Productization

• Feed structured learnings directly into Product.
• Turn the best customer-specific solutions into part of the platform.
• Contribute directly to Clarasight's full-stack production codebase.

You'll Be a Great Fit If You...

• Have 5-8+ years in software engineering, data engineering, or technical consulting.
• Have a track record of delivering in ambiguous, high-ownership environments.
• Contribute to production codebases without hesitation.
• Have spent meaningful time wrangling messy enterprise data.
• Communicate clearly across technical and non-technical audiences.
• Move fast and prioritize outcomes over credit.

Nice to Haves

• Experience with fintech or enterprise financial systems.
• Demonstrated outcomes applying AI/ML to real operational data.
• Prior experience in a forward-deployed, solutions, or founding-engineer capacity at a startup.
• Exposure to corporate travel, expense, or procurement data.

Diverse Perspectives

Innovation comes from teams where different experiences, backgrounds, and ways of thinking collide. We actively seek people who bring something to the table that we don't already have. Come prepared to tell us what that is.

We Offer

• Generous equity in an early-stage company with serious commercial traction.
• Full medical, dental, and vision coverage.
• $500 annual sustainability benefit.
• Direct exposure to a seasoned leadership team.
• A role that grows in scope, responsibility, and compensation as we do.