Founding Forward Deployed Engineer

Clera

Job Overview

Location

San Francisco

Job Type

Full-time

Full Job Description

📋 Description

• This is a rare founding-level opportunity at a Series A AI company in the enterprise marketing compliance space.
• The platform is live with major enterprise customers across CPG, healthcare, and other regulated industries — and is now entering its next phase of rapid scaling.
• The Founding Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) sits at the intersection of customer trust, deal velocity, and product direction.
• You'll go on-site with enterprise customers, uncover what's truly broken, and ship the fix — fast.
• You're not writing specs and handing them off; you're the one who builds it.
• You'll work directly alongside executive leadership in live enterprise cycles, and what you learn in the field shapes what gets built next.
• This role is ideal for someone who thrives at the crossroads of customers, product, and engineering — not siloed in just one.
• Customer discovery: Go beyond stated needs to surface the real, unmet pain.
• POC execution: Configure and ship against real customer workflows — write code, build integrations, and drive time-to-value within tight timelines.
• Product signal: Bring structured, actionable feedback from the field back to engineering.
• Identify cross-customer patterns, help prioritize opportunities, and translate findings into product requirements that influence the roadmap.
• Stakeholder credibility: Build trust across engineering, design, sales, and customer leadership without needing direct authority.
• Communicate clearly enough for a CMO, deeply enough for an engineering team.
• Serve as the external face of the product for customers.
• Product partnership: Collaborate closely with founders, product, and engineering to shape roadmap decisions — bringing structure to ambiguity and ensuring what's being built aligns with real customer needs.

🎯 Requirements

• 7+ years of professional experience in software engineering, forward deployed engineering, or a closely related technical role
• Minimum 2 years average tenure across roles; clear track record of career progression and promotions
• Startup experience strongly preferred; strong candidates from CPG or regulated-industry backgrounds will also be considered
• Proven ability to conduct customer discovery and translate findings into shipped engineering or product deliverables, quickly
• Comfortable writing code and picking up whatever the job requires — full-stack, integrations, scripting, etc.
• Experience building products from 0→1 and a clear understanding of how customer feedback shapes product direction
• Strong cross-functional communication skills, including executive-level stakeholders (CEO, CDO, brand/compliance leadership)
• Must be legally eligible to work in the United States; visa sponsorship is not available

🏖️ Benefits

• Salary: $180,000 – $210,000 per year
• Early-stage equity commensurate with a founding-level role
• Opportunity to directly shape the product, culture, and trajectory of a fast-scaling AI company

Skills & Technologies

Hybrid

$180k-210k

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Clera

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About Clera

Clera, Inc. operates as an AI Talent Agent, leveraging artificial intelligence to enhance and streamline various aspects of the talent acquisition and management process. The company's core offering appears to center on an AI-powered platform designed to connect skilled individuals with suitable opportunities or to assist organizations in efficiently sourcing and evaluating candidates. While comprehensive details regarding specific features, target industries, or the scale of its operations are not yet publicly available, the current online presence indicates that Clera's services are actively being prepared for launch. This suggests an upcoming introduction of innovative AI solutions aimed at optimizing the ecosystem where talent meets demand.

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