Forward Deployed Engineer (Founding Customer Engineer)

fde; San Francisco, Northern (CA, KY); On-site; USD 100,000 - 200,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Job summary

Clera, a seed-stage startup building conversational agents, is hiring its first customer engineer and employee #1 for deployments that run automated B2B product demos and conversions to production wins in San Francisco. You will own deployments end to end, gathering requirements, building integrations, and delivering value to go-to-market teams.

We seek 0-3 years in a customer-facing technical role (solutions engineer, customer engineer, or TAM).

Qualifications

• 0-3 yrs in a customer-facing technical role (solutions engineer, customer engineer, or TAM).

Responsibilities

• Own deployments end to end from requirements gathering to shipping integrations, turning conversational demo-agents into production wins for B2B GTM teams.

Skills

Customer-facing tech

Job description

$100K-$200K + equity (Employer provided) founding FDE conversational agents seed stage

San Francisco, CA · Posted August 1, 2026

Why it's interesting

The founding-FDE pattern keeps compressing. Clera's first non-founder hire is a deployment engineer - employee #1 at a seed-stage shop building conversational agents that run automated B2B product demos, brought on before there's a product team to hand off to. $100K-$200K + founding equity, open to 0-3 yrs. Seed companies now hire the last-mile person before the platform is even finished.

The role

Own customer deployments end to end as Clera's founding customer engineer - gather requirements, build and ship integrations, and turn conversational demo-agents into production wins for B2B go-to-market teams. 0-3 yrs in a customer-facing technical role (solutions engineer, customer engineer, or TAM). Verified live on Clera's own Ashby board.