Forward-Deployed Engineer
Tessera Labs· startup· Computer Software· Oct 15, 2026 · 13d ago
New York City Office / San Francisco Office / San Jose Office
Hybrid
Full-time
Mid
$180K–$233K
2+ years exp
Job description
Forward-Deployed Engineer
Office Locations: East Coast; San Francisco (Hybrid); San José HQ (Hybrid) SoCal, West Coast, Texas, Arizona
Remote work: Tessera is a remote company.
Travel: Required for customer engagements, with a wide variance per customer, of up to 50%
Deployment at Customer Site: Up to 2-3 days a week at customer site depending on customer and phase of engagement
Relocation stipend: Provided
ABOUT TESSERA LABS
As a Forward-Deployed Engineer (FDE) at Tessera, you will drive how global enterprises deploy AI at scale. You will own our most strategic customers and deployments, building and operationalizing AI automation in a category with no established playbook — a role where outcomes are asymmetric and a single person can be decisive. You are the technical arm of our pre-sales and post-sales motions, embedding in Fortune 500 customers whose expectations were set by a world before AI. The solutions you build and ship will replace and augment mission-critical workflows in production that previously consumed thousands of human hours and added months or years to billion-dollar project timelines.
Tessera Forward-Deployed Engineers are technical AI engineers with strong product intuition. You will develop relationships with top decision-makers at the world's most influential companies, and you'll rapidly learn the architectural intricacies sustaining global corporations. You'll own building new systems at the frontier of our platform, and you'll operate with exceptional autonomy and represent Tessera at the highest level. The most important question you'll ask is not how to deploy, but what to build and deploy: as a frontline engineer, you carry the highest signal of how the product is moving and where it ought to go, so you will be expected to drive and shape our product strategy.
What makes this not a consulting role: we are a product company. Our business model drives outcomes through a platform, not people. Your ownership will span customer outcomes and product strategy across both short- and long-term horizons: ship the customer outcome in front of you now, and shape the product's capabilities for the long term.
As a Forward-Deployed Engineer, you'll constantly balance business tradeoffs: win enterprise revenue but protect the core roadmap; drive short-term success while preserving long-term leverage; go deep into customer workflows but don't become a consultant. Ultimately, your responsibility is to drive revenue, holding both horizons in mind at once.
You will sit at the intersection of GTM, Product, Engineering, and Center of Excellence, owning engagements from pre-deployment through maturity and beyond, and partnering closely with Deployed Strategists in customer deployments.
This role is ideal for engineers and ex-founders who thrive under ambiguity and pair strong technical chops with intuitive people skills. Deployed Engineers are proactive problem-solvers with a keen ability to see around corners.
Responsibilities:
- Run deep process discovery with customers — break down complex, ambiguous, cross-system problems into well-defined solutions
- Build lightweight prototypes and applications that showcase Tessera's AI agents in real enterprise scenarios
- Partner with GTM to frame technical boundaries in sales engagements and produce technical collateral, including Statements of Work
- Collaborate with Infra and Engineering to architect implementations that scale across high-volume, business-critical processes
- Iterate with customers and cross-functional partners to drive adoption from pilot to full production
- Carry field signal back to Product and Engineering, helping shape what we build
- Build durable customer relationships and proactively surface new automation opportunities throughout each engagement
- Lead training and workshop sessions on-site to upskill customers on the platform
YOU MAY BE A GOOD FIT IF YOU HAVE
- 2+ years building software in a high-ownership, customer-facing capacity — as a Forward-Deployed Engineer, Solutions Engineer, founding/early engineer at a high-growth startup, or technical founder
- Strong hands-on experience with Python and/or JavaScript/TypeScript/Rust
- Experience building production-grade AI systems (experience at a frontier AI lab or top AI application company is a strong signal)
- A track record of taking ambiguous, high-stakes problems from zero to shipped
- Strong communication with both technical and non-technical stakeholders
- The ability to operate effectively under ambiguity and fast-moving deployments
- An ownership mentality and the willingness to do whatever it takes to get a deployment over the line
- A history of learning hard things fast and operating far outside your original lane
- Founder experience (a plus)
No third party may recruit, solicit candidates, publish job opportunities, use Tessera Labs’ name or branding, or represent that they are acting on behalf of Tessera Labs without prior written authorization. Any such activity conducted without explicit written consent is strictly prohibited.
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