Forward-Deployed Engineer (FDE), Strategic Accounts

Deepgram is the leading platform underpinning the emerging trillion-dollar Voice AI economy providing real-time APIs for speech-to-text (STT) text-to-speech (TTS) and building production-grade voice agents at scale. More than 200000 developers and 1300 organizations build voice offerings that are Powered by Deepgram including Twilio Cloudflare Sierra Decagon Vapi Daily Cresta Granola and Jack in the Box. Deepgrams voice-native foundation models are accessed through cloud APIs or as self-hosted and on-premises software with unmatched accuracy low latency and cost efficiency. Backed by a recent Series C led by leading global investors and strategic partners Deepgram has processed over 50000 years of audio and transcribed more than 1 trillion words. There is no organization in the world that understands voice better than Deepgram.

At Deepgram we expect an AI-first mindsetAI use and comfort arent optional theyre core to how we operate innovate and measure performance.

Every team member who works at Deepgram is expected to actively use and experiment with advanced AI tools and even build your own into your everyday work. We measure how effectively AI is applied to deliver results and consistent creative use of the latest AI capabilities is key to success here. Candidates should be comfortable adopting new models and modes quickly integrating AI into their workflows and continuously pushing the boundaries of what these technologies can do.

Additionally we move at the pace of AI. Change is rapid and you can expect your day-to-day work to evolve just as quickly. This may not be the right role if youre not excited to experiment adapt think on your feet and learn constantly or if youre seeking something highly prescriptive with a traditional 9-to-5.

Most engineering roles ask you to build the platform. This one asks you to build everything between the platform and a customers success: the solutions integrations and tooling that run in production for some of the largest enterprises in the world.

Deepgram is seeking Forward-Deployed Engineers for our strategic accounts. Youll embed with one strategic customer at a time working directly with their technical and business teams alongside Deepgrams core research teams. Todays engagements center on leading restaurant enterprises and restaurant technology partners (we already partner with several of the worlds leading restaurant brands) and the examples in this posting come from that work.

As a Forward-Deployed Engineer youll take Deepgrams voice AI platform the last mile. That means production-scale integrations with the systems that your customer actually runs on (today thats point of sale loyalty payment gateways and customer data platforms) voice agents that take live orders from customers every day and everything in between: the tooling prompt engineering and evaluation work that bridges what Deepgram offers today and what makes your customer successful tomorrow.

Forward-deployed means you do this work with your customer not just for them. Youll be on site regularly embedded with their technical team and close enough to the business to see problems before they become escalations. Youll also have a senior Forward-Deployed Engineer alongside you reviewing your work before it ships and bringing you into customer meetings. And the platform is not a fixed product that you implement. When your customer needs a capability that the platform does not offer yet youll be the one who proves what it should do next and what you build and learn in the field becomes part of Deepgrams offering for every customer after yours.

Forward-Deployed Engineering is how Deepgram embeds with its most strategic accounts. Youll fully deploy into a dedicated account pod (a small cross-functional team built around one strategic customer) for a defined stretch working inside of that accounts day to day with a high degree of autonomy. Full deployment means exactly that: while youre deployed your pods account is your only customer assignment with no time split across other accounts or teams. Your work directly shapes how some of the worlds largest brands put voice AI in front of their customers.

Forward-Deployed Engineers are part of our broader Applied Engineering team which serves as the technical interface between Deepgram and our customers across their entire journey (it combines what other companies split into Forward-Deployed Engineering Sales Engineering Solutions Architecture Implementation and Technical Support). Applied Engineering is your home team and your growth path. Youll be hired into the Applied Engineer position which has a single growth ladder from Associate through Principal and youll grow proficient across multiple roles over time. The pod is where youre deployed; Applied Engineering is where you grow.

• Build and ship whatever the solution needs whether thats an end-to-end service an integration internal tooling or agent and prompt engineering

• Design develop and maintain production-scale integrations with the third-party systems that your customer runs on (in todays pods: point of sale loyalty payment gateways customer data platforms)

• Spend regular time on site with your customer working directly with their technical and business teams

• Monitor debug and optimize what you ship in production including some of the hardest audio environments in voice AI (noisy multi-mic drive-thru)

• Work with our research and product teams to push the platform where your customer needs it to go and feed what you learn in the field back into the product

• Test changes against live production data and measure whether they move accuracy latency and throughput

• Embedded customer delivery (60-80%) Deployments integrations and technical problem-solving with your account plus turning what the field teaches you into reusable solutions automation and documentation. Where you sit in that range depends on where your engagement is in its cycle.

• Scoping and expansion support (10-25%) Joining detailed solution scoping shaping statements of work so that what gets promised can be built and surfacing the expansion opportunities that you spot from inside of the account. Discovery and demos belong to a pre-sales Applied Engineer in your pod; youll take parts of that work when the account needs it and hand it back when delivery peaks.

• Internal collaboration (15%) Product feedback knowledge sharing and contributing to Applied Engineering strategy.

The delivery and scoping buckets trade against each other: at the peak of an engagement delivery takes the scoping share.

Youll have regular recurring time with your customer and youll be on site at least once or twice a month. On some accounts and at the peaks of an engagement (a launch a critical integration a high-stakes pilot) on-site time can rise to as much as 80%. Between those stretches most of your time goes to making the solution succeed: building integrating debugging and shipping.

• First 30 Days Complete the accelerated Forward-Deployed onboarding in your first two weeks covering Deepgrams technology products competitive landscape and core APIs. The standard Applied Engineer ramp runs four to six weeks. Yours is faster because your pod is waiting. Then spend the back half of the month in motion:

  • Shadow your pods active engagement

  • Make your first customer site visit alongside a senior Forward-Deployed Engineer

  • Take ownership of your first workstream (an integration a tool or a production issue) with your work reviewed before it ships

• 60 Days Own a meaningful slice of your customers solution:

  • Join the on-site rhythm and build relationships with your customers technical team

  • Ship work that runs in production

• 90 Days Operate with independence:

  • Run your own on-site visits and own your slice end to end

  • Bring what the field teaches you back to the team as product feedback and reusable building blocks

  • Join your first solution-scoping conversations with the pod

• See yourself as an engineer first who happens to be great with customers not the other way around

• Thrive in high-ambiguity environments where moving fast and making sound decisions under pressure are part of the job

• Enjoy embedding deeply with customers building trust and becoming their go-to technical partner

• Find satisfaction in shipping production systems and watching them run in the physical world (a drive-thru at rush hour is an honest test environment)

• Want to grow quickly with high-stakes accounts a steep learning curve and a senior engineer reviewing your work

The software bar comes first. Its important to us that you have:

• A Bachelors or Masters degree in Computer Science Engineering or a related field or a record of building that speaks for itself

• Hands-on experience developing and deploying backend systems that run in production whether through internships co-ops your first years in industry or projects that shipped to live users

• Experience with cloud-based infrastructure and API design

• The instinct to proactively recognize problems and to care about the impact of your work

And because youll be in the room with customers we look for the raw materials of customer-facing craft:

• Relationship building You genuinely enjoy getting to know the people that you work with and you invest in those relationships beyond what the immediate task requires.

• Reading the room You notice who in a meeting is engaged who is skeptical and what is going unsaid.

• Acting on what you notice When you spot an opening whether a stakeholder with a problem that you can solve or a question behind the question you move on it.

• Coachability Nobody arrives with all of this polished. Well teach the craft. We look for the appetite to learn it and openness to feedback along the way.

• Experience working with audio or voice interfaces

• Experience building and maintaining a system that integrates with many third-party APIs particularly point-of-sale systems

• Experience taking a system from zero to one

• Depth in one or more modern languages (our field work spans Python JavaScript and TypeScript Rust Go Kotlin and whatever your customer runs) and the flexibility to pick up the next one

• Experience with containerization tools such as Docker and Kubernetes

• Any experience being the technical person in front of a non-technical audience (teaching tutoring demos hackathons support)

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Required Experience:

IC