Senior Forward Deployed Engineer

Clera; New York (NY); Hybrid; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Clera is seeking a technical lead for customer engagements across Europe, guiding enterprise teams from discovery to production deployments of AI systems grounded in their data.

You will work across product, sales, and engineering, running demos and PoCs, translating requirements into actionable feedback for engineering, and traveling frequently to client sites across the UK and Europe while based in New York in a hybrid setup.

Qualifications

• Minimum 5 years of professional experience, including 2–3 years in hands‑on technical or data roles.
• Track record converting technical proofs of value into production deployments in enterprise B2B software.
• Strong knowledge of data warehouses, ETL/ELT pipelines, data governance, and enterprise data architectures.
• Working knowledge of production LLM and agentic systems and their capabilities/limits.
• Experience leading technical discovery, demos, PoCs, security reviews, and multi‑stakeholder buying processes.
• Ability to prototype for customers using Python or SQL and convey feedback to engineers.

Responsibilities

• Lead customer discovery to understand data architectures, constraints, and business needs.
• Scope and deliver proofs of value from validation to production commitments.
• Run demonstrations, explain architectural tradeoffs, and address objections with enterprise stakeholders.
• Build reusable discovery frameworks, demo narratives, and reference architectures.
• Translate customer requirements into actionable product feedback for engineering.
• Partner with ML and infrastructure teams to support deployments and commitments.
• Travel regularly to customer sites across the UK and Europe.

Skills

Data architectures

Proof of value to production

Python

SQL

Data warehouses

LLM systems

Stakeholder engagement

Tools

Python

SQL

Knowledge graphs

Ontology

Job description

About the Role

Join an early-stage enterprise AI infrastructure company as the technical lead for customer engagements across Europe. You will work across product, sales, and engineering, helping enterprise teams move from initial technical discovery to production deployments of AI systems grounded in their data.

What You'll Do

• Lead customer discovery to understand data architectures, operational constraints, and business needs.

• Scope and deliver proofs of value from technical validation through production commitments.

• Run demonstrations, explain architectural tradeoffs, and address technical objections with enterprise stakeholders.

• Build reusable discovery frameworks, demo narratives, objection handling guidance, and reference architectures.

• Translate customer requirements and edge cases into actionable product feedback for engineering.

• Partner with machine learning and infrastructure teams to support deployments and deliver on customer commitments.

• Travel regularly to customer sites across the UK and Europe.

What We're Looking For

• At least 5 years of professional experience, including 2 to 3 years in a hands‑on technical or data role.

• A record of converting technical proofs of value into production deployments in enterprise B2B software.

• Strong knowledge of data warehouses, ETL/ELT pipelines, data governance, and enterprise data architectures.

• Working knowledge of production LLM and agentic systems, including their capabilities and limitations.

• Experience leading technical discovery, demos, proofs of concept, security reviews, and multi‑stakeholder enterprise buying processes.

• Ability to prototype for customers using Python or SQL and communicate technical feedback clearly to engineering teams.

• Experience with regulated or air‑gapped deployments, knowledge graphs, semantic layers, ontologies, or entity resolution is valuable.

• Comfort working in ambiguous, customer‑facing environments; startup experience and multilingual skills are a plus.

Compensation & Benefits

Visa sponsorship is not available for this role.

Location

Hybrid, based in New York, United States, with regular travel to customer sites across the UK and Europe.