Forward-Deployed Engineer (FDE), Strategic Accounts
Deepgram · San Francisco, United States +1 · 1mo ago
Company Overview
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 200,000 developers and 1,300+ organizations build voice offerings that are ‘Powered by Deepgram’, including Twilio, Cloudflare, Sierra, Decagon, Vapi, Daily, Cresta, Granola, and Jack in the Box. Deepgram’s 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 50,000 years of audio and transcribed more than 1 trillion words. There is no organization in the world that understands voice better than Deepgram.
Company Operating Rhythm
At Deepgram, we expect an AI-first mindset—AI use and comfort aren’t optional, they’re 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 you’re not excited to experiment, adapt, think on your feet, and learn constantly, or if you’re seeking something highly prescriptive with a traditional 9-to-5.
The Opportunity
Most engineering roles ask you to build the platform. This one asks you to build everything between the platform and a customer's 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. You'll embed with one strategic customer at a time, working directly with their technical and business teams, alongside Deepgram's core research teams. Today's engagements center on leading restaurant enterprises and restaurant technology partners (we already partner with several of the world's leading restaurant brands), and the examples in this posting come from that work.
As a Forward-Deployed Engineer, you'll take Deepgram's voice AI platform the last mile. That means production-scale integrations with the systems that your customer actually runs on (today, that's 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. You'll be on site regularly, embedded with their technical team, and close enough to the business to see problems before they become escalations. You'll 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, you'll be the one who proves what it should do next, and what you build and learn in the field becomes part of Deepgram's offering for every customer after yours.
About Forward-Deployed Engineering at Deepgram
Forward-Deployed Engineering is how Deepgram embeds with its most strategic accounts. You'll 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 account's day to day with a high degree of autonomy. Full deployment means exactly that: while you're deployed, your pod's account is your only customer assignment, with no time split across other accounts or teams. Your work directly shapes how some of the world's 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. You'll be hired into the Applied Engineer position, which has a single growth ladder from Associate through Principal, and you'll grow proficient across multiple roles over time. The pod is where you're deployed; Applied Engineering is where you grow.
What You'll Do
Build and ship whatever the solution needs, whether that's 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 today's 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
Time Allocation
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; you'll 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.
The On-Site Expectation
You'll have regular, recurring time with your customer, and you'll 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.
Additionally, this role will maintain an in-office presence in either our San Francisco or New York City office.
Your First 90 Days
First 30 Days — Complete the accelerated Forward-Deployed onboarding in your first two weeks, covering Deepgram's 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 pod's 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 customer's solution:
Join the on-site rhythm and build relationships with your customer's 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
You'll Love This Role If You
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
What We Look For
The software bar comes first. It's important to us that you have:
A Bachelor's or Master's 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 you'll 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. We'll teach the craft. We look for the appetite to learn it and openness to feedback along the way.
It Would Be Great if You Had
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)
Notice: We're aware of individuals impersonating Deepgram recruiters. All legitimate Deepgram recruiting communication comes from an @deepgram.com email address. If you've received a message claiming to be Deepgram, please forward it to careers@deepgram.com.