Forward Deployed Engineer
Forward Deployed Engineer at Clera — San Francisco, CA, US
- Company: Clera
- Location: San Francisco, CA, US
- Employment type: Full-time
- Salary: $150,000–$250,000 a year
- Posted: 2026-09-27
About this role
ABOUT THE ROLE
This is a founding engineer opportunity at an early-stage AI infrastructure startup building an agentic integration platform. You will own core systems end-to-end alongside the founders, shaping the engineering foundation that every future hire builds on. The work is high-stakes and high-autonomy: real agents doing real work with real consequences in production.
WHAT YOU'LL DO
- Own the agent platform, infrastructure, and integrations runtime end-to-end.
- Set the engineering patterns and architectural decisions that define the entire codebase going forward.
- Ship to production constantly, working directly with the founding team.
- Help shape the system holistically across agent orchestration, durable execution, and self-healing infrastructure in your first year.
WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR
- 2 to 9 years of professional software engineering experience, excluding staff, principal, lead, or manager titles at large companies.
- Strong CS fundamentals from a rigorous technical degree program (Bachelor's, Master's, or PhD, completed or in progress).
- Experience founding a startup or engineering at an early-stage (pre-seed through Series A) venture-backed company; candidates whose entire career has been at large tech, enterprise, consulting, or agency environments are not a fit.
- Proven track record of shipping and owning real production systems end-to-end, multiple times.
- Comfortable working across the full stack with TypeScript, React, PostgreSQL, Kubernetes, and AWS.
- Familiarity with the Effect-TS or Bun ecosystem is a plus.
- At ease using AI coding agents while exercising strong judgment over production quality.
- Based in the San Francisco Bay Area or US-based with a concrete, dated plan to relocate to San Francisco for five-days-a-week on-site work.
COMPENSATION & BENEFITS
- Salary: $150,000 to $250,000 USD annually.
- Visa sponsorship is available where an O-1 visa is a realistic path.
LOCATION
On-site, five days a week in San Francisco, CA, United States.
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