Forward Deployed Engineer (Pre Sales)
$150k - $215k USD
Who We Are
We’re building OpenHands, an open-source AI platform that empowers engineering teams to accelerate development, automate workflows, and integrate intelligent coding assistance into real-world software delivery.
As a Forward-Deployed Engineer (Pre Sales), you’ll work alongside Sales to help prospective customers evaluate, adopt, and purchase OpenHands. You’ll operate as both a deeply technical practitioner and a trusted advisor, guiding prospects through technical discovery, demos, proofs of value, and architectural conversations that lead to confident buying decisions.
What You’ll Do
Partner closely with AE & Executive leadership to support the full enterprise sales cycle—from discovery and demos to proof-of-concept design, technical deep dives, and deployment guidance.
Lead compelling technical presentations and product demos tailored to developers, engineering leaders, and technical executives.
Architect and deliver successful evaluations and POCs, ensuring customers can validate performance, security, and developer experience
Gather customer feedback and collaborate with Product, Engineering, and Developer Experience teams to influence roadmap and feature prioritization.
Create technical content (sample integrations, reference architectures, demos, tutorials) that help enterprise teams onboard more effectively.
Represent customer needs internally and act as a voice of the field to ensure our product evolves with real-world developer workflows.
Build strong relationships with engineering leaders, DevOps teams, and platform owners across customer organizations.
Participate in industry events, webinars, and developer community initiatives to showcase best practices and product capabilities.
What You Bring
5+ years of years of experience in a technical pre-sales, solutions engineering, sales engineering, or similar customer-facing role at a developer-focused SaaS company.
Proficiency in Python and/or JavaScript/TypeScript
Experience deploying to cloud environments and running containerized workloads (Docker; Kubernetes or equivalent)
Direct experience working with customers or technical stakeholders
Proven ability to make technical topics accessible for non-technical stakeholders and first-time AI users
Empathy for users learning AI-powered tools and creativity in helping them succeed
Comfort operating autonomously in fast-moving, ambiguous environments
Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines, Git-based workflows, and developer tooling
Familiarity with AI dev tools (OpenHands, Claude Code, Copilot, Cursor) a plus
Bonus: experience in field engineering, pre-sales, or developer relations
Why Join OpenHands
Competitive compensation: $150,000 - $215,000 base salary, plus equity and variable comp
Remote-first with flexible hours (core hours 12–4pm ET | 4–8pm UTC)
Fully covered U.S. health, vision, and dental insurance
Unmetered PTO + holidays
Collaborate with world-class engineers, product builders, and AI researchers
Growth path toward senior sales engineering, SE management, solutions architecture, product, or technical leadership roles
A culture built on kindness, candor, autonomy, and learning
We Welcome All Applicants
We’re committed to building an inclusive, supportive environment where everyone can thrive. We celebrate diversity and do not discriminate based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, or any other protected characteristic. If you’re passionate about building great developer tools and excited about the future of AI-powered software development, we’d love to hear from you.