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Clera

Founding Forward Deployed Engineer

San Francisco$180k–$210kfulltimemidAdded today

About this role

Join an early-stage AI company scaling rapidly with live enterprise customers as a Founding Forward Deployed Engineer. You'll bridge customer needs and product development by conducting discovery, shipping POCs, and directly influencing roadmap priorities while working closely with founders and engineering teams.

What you'll do

  • Conduct customer discovery to uncover underlying pain points and validate product-market fit opportunities
  • Build and ship POCs and integrations that solve real enterprise workflows within tight timelines
  • Translate field insights into actionable product requirements and signal patterns across customer base
  • Build cross-functional credibility with engineering, design, sales, and executive stakeholders
  • Collaborate with founders and product on roadmap decisions based on customer feedback
  • Travel on-site to customers and work 3 days/week in San Francisco office

What they're looking for

  • Full-stack software engineering and code shipping
  • Customer discovery and user research methods
  • Enterprise SaaS integrations
  • Product sense and translating feedback to requirements
  • Cross-functional communication with technical and executive audiences
  • Ability to learn and own ambiguous problems quickly
  • Startup mentality and comfort with rapid iteration
  • Experience in regulated industries or AI products (preferred)

Benefits

  • Salary: $180,000–$210,000 USD annually
  • Early-stage equity opportunity
  • Work directly with founders in high-ownership role
  • Hybrid setup: 3 days/week in San Francisco with customer travel
  • Impact customer trajectory and product direction immediately
  • No visa sponsorship available
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Clera

Clera builds an agentic operating system that automates complex workflows and processes through AI agents, with a platform designed to simplify distributed infrastructure management for developers. The company is hiring Founding Engineers, Customer Engineers, and Product Engineers to develop both backend systems and user-facing interfaces across their AI automation products.

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Likely interview questions

  • Tell us about a time you identified a customer need that wasn't initially obvious—how did you uncover it and what impact did it have?
  • Describe your experience shipping a POC or MVP under time pressure. How did you prioritize what to build?
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