Forward Deployed Engineer
$120k - $180k USD
Forward Deployed Engineer
About Bland AI
We’re a series B startup, and have raised $65 million from Emergence Capital, Y Combinator, and the founders of PayPal and Twilio. We have a 40 person team, and we serve customers like Better.com, by delivering the most friendly, helpful, and human-like AI phone agents in the world.
Why This Role Exists
Every customer is different – the results they want to drive, expectations of their customer base, and internal systems are totally varied. We need people who are excited to dive into that ambiguity to turn fuzzy goals into concrete plans, ship the first pathways yourself, then broaden adoption across our customer’s org.
What You’ll Do
Presales partner. Jump on discovery calls, white-board integrations, and explain Bland’s unique features (and ability to drive value) when speaking with product and engineering leaders. You’re working directly with an AE to sell Bland – and to scope an implementation timeline and plan.
Own implementation start-to-finish. Design, build, and iterate pathways; wire up APIs; test relentlessly until the agent has “Bland tone” and feels human.
Coordinate stakeholders. Engineers, product, operations, and anyone else who’s involved with implementation—you’ll corral them, set timelines and expectations, persistently follow up, and make sure timelines are hit and outcomes are delivered.
Move fast and iterate. You build a thorough first agent (based on the scoping you define with the customer) and then you get it into production as fast as possible. You listen back to real calls, fix edge cases, then actively share those results with the customer’s team to build excitement and demonstrate the progress you’re driving.
Expand the footprint. By embedding yourself in the customer’s organization, you understand the business priorities, know the value calls are driving, and you identify new opportunities for expansion and then are incredibly persistent to scope those expansions and work with sales to close the upsell.
Be the face of Bland. You are the customer’s champion, their best employee, and you treat them with unreasonable hospitality. You travel on-site, get to know our customers on a human level, and develop real relationships with our champions and other stakeholders, going above and beyond to host training sessions and dinners.
Must-Have Qualifications
3-7 yrs in solutions engineering, product-minded software engineering, founding a startup, or any role that proves you can own a customer-facing build from zero to production.
Comfortable reading & writing REST/JSON; able to sling quick Python or JS scripts to glue systems together.
Track record of relentless ownership—moments where you ran through walls and surpassed immense challenges (can be both in personal and professional life)
Clear communicator who can translate LLM quirks - and the specifics of how Bland works – to everyone on our customer’s team (at the right level of complexity for your audience).
Ready for the intensity of a fast-growing, early-stage startup—the work is hard, the pace is high. This is not a big tech job. You’re joining Bland because you want to push yourself, you’re ambitious, and you care about doing great work.
Will spend the first month full-time in our beautiful Jackson Square office in San Francisco, then stay mostly in-person or on customer sites. As we build our AI engineering team, we want people to be in-person as much as possible and we have a strong in-office culture.
Nice-to-Haves
Built side-projects or shipped production features with LLMs.
Prior life as a founder, solutions architect, PM, CSM, or any other role where you had high ownership over delivering outcomes and was customer facing. Prior experience owning pre-sales to post-sales to expansions is a huge plus (as long as you’re flexible and excited to learn how to work with LLMs!)
Exceptional new grads with strong ownership and ambition are welcome to apply.
You’ll Thrive Here If…
You’re smart, relentless, and love working with customers
You’re organized, keep tight timelines, and deliver clear updates (exceptionally thorough)
You like hopping on planes to visit customers on site (not a requirement, but hopefully it’s something you enjoy).
You care about the craft and about our customers’ customers – all our phone agents should sound truly human and have “Bland tone” – they should not sound like a corporate robot or like a phone tree.
Relentlessness is the most important quality
If you think you’re missing relevant experience but you’re a fast learner who’s excited for a new challenge – and you have the intangibles our team is looking for – please reach out. As long as you’re resourceful and a fast learner (and you can prove it to our team) we would love to meet you.
Compensation & Perks
Salary: $120k – $180k base + meaningful equity + benefits.
Gorgeous office in Jackson Square, San Francisco (rooftop views & great coffee shops nearby).