Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE)

OfferZen; South Africa; On-site; ZAR 1,800,000 - 2,400,000; Full time

Job summary

Wonderful.ai, as a client of OfferZen, seeks a Forward Deployed Engineer based in Johannesburg to work with enterprise clients on AI-driven deployments. You will design end-to-end solutions, own deployments, and collaborate with product and engineering to ship impactful, production-ready AI agents.

The role emphasizes hands-on execution, navigating ambiguity, and building systems that perform reliably in real-world scenarios for diverse customers.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of software engineering or technical problem-solving experience.
• Strong fundamentals in software design and system thinking.
• Experience working across systems, integrations, and data flows.
• Comfort working directly with customers and owning ambiguous problems.
• Clear communication and ownership mindset.
• Interest in building AI-powered systems in practice.

Responsibilities

• Partner with customers to understand operational challenges and success criteria.
• Translate open-ended problems into clear technical designs and implementations.
• Build AI agents that integrate with customer systems and perform real tasks.
• Own deployments, including reliability, performance, and continuous improvement.
• Test with real data, measure outcomes, and iterate based on results.
• Collaborate with Product & Engineering to ship high-quality solutions.
• Contribute to tools, documentation, and best practices that scale customer delivery.

Skills

Software engineering

System design

Customer-facing

Ownership mindset

AI/automation interest

Job description

OfferZen's client, Wonderful.ai is hiring for a Forward Deployed Engineer to join their growing team!

Wonderful.ai is a young start-up with $300M raised, and is now valued at $2B after 18 months of operations. They've grown to 600 employees across 32 countries, with an engineering team that includes people from Google, Palantir, Databricks, Microsoft, and Slack. They enable enterprises to build, test, deploy, and monitor AI agents for their most complex needs, serving customers and employees seamlessly across voice, chat, email, and back-office systems in any language or cultural context.

Role Overview

As a Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) at Wonderful, you’ll solve high-impact, real-world problems alongside enterprise customers and own work from first principles through production outcomes.

You’ll work directly with customers to understand critical workflows, design AI-driven solutions, and deploy agents that operate reliably in production. You’ll own projects end-to-end from problem definition and system design to launch and iteration - and be accountable for real business impact.

This is a hands on-generalist role for engineers who enjoy navigating ambiguity, learning quickly, and working across systems while partnering with enterprises as they become AI-driven organizations.

What You’ll Do

• Partner with customers to understand operational challenges and success criteria
• Translate open-ended problems into clear technical designs and implementations
• Build AI agents that integrate with customer systems and perform real tasks
• Own deployments, including reliability, performance, and continuous improvement
• Test with real data, measure outcomes, and iterate based on results
• Collaborate with Product & Engineering to ship high-quality solutions
• Contribute to tools, documentation, and best practices that scale customer delivery

What We’re Looking For

• 5+ years of experience in software engineering or technical problem-solving roles
• Strong fundamentals in software design, system thinking
• Experience working across systems, integrations, and data flows
• Comfort working directly with customers and owning ambiguous problems
• Clear communication skills and a strong ownership mindset
• Curiosity and interest in building AI-powered systems that work in practice

Nice to Have

• Experience in forward-deployed, solutions engineering, or customer-facing roles
• Exposure to AI agents, automation, or conversational systems
• Experience operating and improving production systems

Logistics

• Location: must be based in or willing to relocate to Johannesburg (office is in Rosebank)
• Office attendance: ~4 days a week on-site, typically at a client's office, not Wonderful's own office
• Citizenship/visa: no strict requirement to be SA citizen, but no visa sponsorship available — candidate must already have the right to work in SA
• Compensation expectation: targeting 95th–99th percentile of local market rates - they’re willing to pay top of the range for talent, skill and experience
• Pay structure: paid in ZAR, but employee can choose to anchor salary value to USD (converted at spot rate monthly) if they wish