Forward Deployed Engineer (US)

Cekura; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 140,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Meaningful equity

Competitive compensation

Fast growth

Team meals

Job summary

Cekura is hiring a Forward Deployed Engineer to work directly with technical customers, helping them extract value from our platform. You will bridge customers, product, and engineering to design self-improving loops and guide product roadmap.

Ideal candidates have 2+ years in a dev-tool or SaaS setting, are fluent with APIs, logs, and debugging, and can read SQL with Python or JavaScript. This is an on-site SF role with strong equity and growth opportunities.

Qualifications

• 2+ years in a technical role at a dev-tool, infra, SaaS, or AI company.
• Experience with APIs, logs, dashboards, and customer debugging.
• Comfort with SQL and one of Python or JavaScript.
• Strong written and verbal communication.

Responsibilities

• Embed deeply with customers to understand agent workflows and onboard them effectively.
• Automate product insights to show value and where users get stuck.
• Drive product direction by translating customer learnings into RFCs and roadmaps.
• Build the FDE org by creating playbooks and processes for the team.

Skills

APIs

SQL

Python

JavaScript

Customer debugging

Tools

Twilio

WebRTC

LiveKit

SIP

Job description

About Cekura

Cekura is building the infrastructure for self-improving conversational agents. Teams use Cekura to test, monitor, debug, and improve AI agents across voice, chat, SMS, phone, and web. We help them catch failures in latency, barge-in, tool calls, hallucinations, instruction-following, regressions, and production workflows. We're YC F24, growing fast, backed by top investors, and working with teams deploying AI agents in the real world.

About The Role

We're hiring a Forward Deployed Engineer to work directly with technical customers and help them get value from Cekura. You'll sit at the intersection of customers, product, engineering, and GTM. Your job is to deeply understand how customers build agents, help them create self-improving loops with Cekura, and turn those learnings into better product and better process.

What You'll Do

Embed deeply with customers

Work with customers to understand their agent workflows, onboard them well, and help them build continuous loops across testing, monitoring, debugging, and improvement.

Automate product insights

Build systems and workflows that show how customers use Cekura, where they get value, where they get stuck, and where we should help next.

Drive product direction

Turn customer learnings into clear product feedback, RFCs, and roadmap input. Help us decide what to build next.

Build the FDE org

Create the playbooks, processes, and standards for how FDE works at Cekura.

About You

• You care deeply about customers and measurable outcomes.
• You are technical enough to read API docs, inspect payloads, debug logs, and reason about systems.
• You're comfortable with APIs, webhooks, basic SQL, and Python or JavaScript.
• You communicate clearly with both engineers and executives.
• You like ambiguity, move fast, and create structure from scratch.
• You use data to understand adoption, risk, value, and impact.
• Bonus points - if you are an ex-founder or aspire to be a founder in the future.

Minimum Qualifications

• 2+ years in a technical role at a dev-tool, infra, SaaS, or AI company.
• Experience working with APIs, logs, dashboards, and customer debugging.
• Comfort with basic SQL and one of Python or JavaScript.
• Strong written and verbal communication.

Nice to Have

• Early or founding FDE experience
• Experience with LLMs, AI agents, voice AI, observability, testing, or evals.
• Familiarity with tools like Twilio, SIP, WebRTC, Vapi, Retell, LiveKit, or Pipecat.
• Experience working directly with technical founders or engineering teams.

This Might Not Be for You If

• You need rigid processes or heavy structure.
• You prefer pure relationship management without technical depth.
• You don't enjoy messy customer debugging.
• You want a narrow, clearly defined role.
• You don't want to work in-person in SF.

Why Cekura

• Build the foundation of the FDE org.
• Work directly with founders and a highly technical team.
• Help define infrastructure for self-improving AI agents.
• Meaningful equity, competitive compensation, and fast growth.
• Medical, dental, vision, team lunches, and dinners.