Senior Forward Deployed Engineer

productboard, Inc; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 118,125 - 157,500; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive compensation

Stock options

Flexible PTO

Mental Wellness Program

Company contribution to gym memberships

Job summary

productboard, Inc is seeking an experienced Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) in San Francisco. As an FDE, you will partner closely with customers to solve real problems and shape the product.

This senior role involves driving technical solutions in sales cycles and ensuring customer success from initial discovery to deployment. You'll engage directly with executives and represent productboard at various industry events.

If you're passionate about AI and product management, this opportunity allows you to directly influence both customer success and the future of our product.

Qualifications

• 6+ years in a Sales Engineering role at a B2B SaaS company.
• Hands-on experience with REST APIs and webhooks.
• Ability to drive complex, multi-stakeholder deal cycles.

Responsibilities

• Partner with Account Executives for deep technical discovery.
• Deliver impactful presentations and demos to customers.
• Build repeatable PoC frameworks and demo environments.

Skills

Sales Engineering

Solutions Engineering

REST APIs

SaaS integration patterns

Exceptional communication

Presentation skills

Problem-solving

Tools

Productboard

Salesforce

Jira

Zendesk

Claude

Job description

Meet Spark, the first agentic product system. Join us live June 30th.

Productboard is an AI-first company. Not as a tagline — but as a daily reality.

Everyone here, from GTM or People to Product and Engineering, and our CEO, uses AI every day to prototype, explore ideas, and ship faster. We are investing deeply to make AI part of our foundation.

What that looks like:

• Access from day one. Every employee and leader gets the best tools available — Cursor, Claude Code, Codex, and more.
• AI Champions across teams. Dedicated experts embedded in teams to pair, unblock, and help you move faster with AI agents.
• Dedicated AI days. Every six weeks, all teams get focused time to ship real features using AI tools and push boundaries.

AI isn't something we experiment with occasionally. It's how we build.

The opportunity

Productboard is looking for an experienced Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) to join our Go-To-Market team. This is the evolution of our Sales Engineer function — reimagined for engineers who want to do more than demo software. As an FDE, you're embedded in the field, working alongside prospects and customers to solve real problems, then bringing those learnings back to shape the product itself.

You will be the single most technical presence in a sales cycle and the person ultimately responsible for the customer's success — from first discovery call through to a live, value-generating deployment. You own the outcome: driving discovery, architecting solutions, running proofs‑of‑concept across both our core platform and Productboard Spark (our AI agent for product managers), and closing the loop between what customers need and what our Product team builds next.

This is a senior, high-visibility role at one of the most important functions at Productboard. You'll engage at the executive level, represent us on global stages, and be the person both customers and internal teams rely on when it matters most. If you want your work to directly influence revenue, customer success, and the future of our product, this role was built for you.

Why this matters for your career

The gap between professionals who are building with AI daily and those who are still watching is widening fast. At Productboard, you won't just use AI tools. You will shape the architecture that makes AI agents effective, define the workflows that make them reliable, and build the evaluation systems that make them trustworthy. You will work in an environment where AI first is not a future aspiration. It is the current standard.

The skills you build here, agent native design, multi‑model orchestration, eval‑driven development, AI‑ready codebase architecture, are the skills that will define senior engineering for the next decade.

On a Typical Day, You Will...

Pre‑Sales & Technical Validation (Primary Focus)

• Partner with Account Executives to drive complex, multi‑stakeholder deal cycles - leading deep technical discovery, uncovering pain points, and aligning Productboard's core platform and Spark's AI‑first capabilities to customer business objectives.
• Deliver high‑impact presentations, demos, and solution briefings that tell Productboard's differentiated story and connect capabilities directly to the customer's strategic problems - not a feature walkthrough.
• Own all technical aspects of the sales cycle: scoping and running PoCs in live environments, wiring up integrations, responding to RFPs, validating API and architecture fit, and identifying expansion opportunities at existing accounts.

Product Feedback Loop (Primary Focus)

• Act as Productboard's eyes and ears in the field, synthesizing patterns across prospects and customers (recurring objections, missing capabilities, workflow gaps) into structured, actionable product intelligence.
• Serve as the primary liaison between Sales, Product, and Marketing, sharing field insights that shape the roadmap, integration strategy, and positioning, you're often the first to know when the narrative isn't landing.
• Build repeatable PoC frameworks, demo environments, and technical playbooks that scale your insights across the FDE team.

Field Marketing & Thought Leadership

• Represent Productboard at industry events, conferences, and roadshows as a credible technical voice - speaking on stage, running booth demos, and engaging prospects in meaningful conversations about AI‑first product management.
• Host and lead high‑touch executive dinners, Product Leader roundtables, and panels globally, building relationships with CPOs, VPs of Product, and senior practitioners. FDEs lead the room, not just attend it.
• Develop and deliver thought leadership content with Marketing – talks, live demos, and session formats that showcase the core platform and Spark in real‑world contexts. Your ability to speak the language of product strategy, prioritization, and AI‑driven PM workflows is what makes these engagements land.

Implementation & Activation

Strategic accounts: Co‑build the solution with the customer to secure the technical win — designing configurations, validating integrations, and proving value in their environment. Hand off cleanly to AI Success with full context so they can drive org‑wide adoption without starting from scratch.

Scale accounts: Own activation end‑to‑end. Configure integrations (Jira, Salesforce, Zendesk, Azure DevOps, Slack, and more), design workspace structures aligned to the customer's product operating model, and drive them to first value without a handoff.

• Build scalable activation assets — guided setup flows, integration templates, and self‑serve onboarding resources — that make scale‑motion delivery repeatable.

Productboard, Slack, Salesforce, Google Suite, Zendesk, Claude, Zoom, Gong, Jira, Github, Loom.

About you

• 6+ years in a Sales Engineering, Solutions Engineering, or Forward Deployed Engineering role at a B2B SaaS company.
• A genuine builder's instinct — you don't just demo, you configure, integrate, and prototype live solutions in front of customers.
• Hands‑on experience with REST APIs, webhooks, and SaaS integration patterns; comfortable getting into the technical weeds during an evaluation.
• Proven ability to drive complex, multi‑stakeholder deal cycles — you can navigate technical buyers, IT, and the C‑suite in the same engagement.
• Strong understanding of how product, engineering, and customer success teams operate — you can speak credibly to a CPO and a Staff Engineer in the same meeting.
• Exceptional communication and presentation skills; you translate complexity into clarity and make the technical feel accessible.
• A product‑minded perspective — you naturally ask "why does this customer need this?" and connect the answer to something bigger.
• A bias for ownership — you follow through, take accountability, and don't wait to be asked.

Bonus

• Familiarity with product management tools (Productboard, Jira Product Discovery, Aha!, etc.), AI assisted workflows, or customer feedback platforms. Hands‑on experience with Productboard Spark or similar AI product agents is a strong plus.
• Comfort presenting to senior audiences — panels, executive dinners, or conference stages — and representing a company's technical vision publicly.

Compensation

The expected base pay range for this position in the San Francisco area is $118,125- $157,500. In addition to the base pay, this role is eligible for competitive equity awards and benefits. Productboard's pay ranges are determined by role, level, and location. Within the range, the successful candidate's starting base pay will be determined based on factors including job‑related skills, experience, qualifications, relevant education or training, and market conditions. These ranges may be modified in the future.

Benefits

• Competitive compensation, stock options, company 401k
• Budget for online courses, books, and conferences
• Flexible PTO and paid sick days
• Volunteer Day for you to help causes close to your heart
• Free snacks, drinks, and catered lunches
• Company contribution to gym and wellness memberships
• Flexible working hours and home office. Hybrid schedule Mon/Tues/Thurs in office
• Mental Wellness Program to support your well‑being and self‑care

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