Forward Deployed Engineer

About Speakeasy

AI is moving from chat interfaces to operational systems.

Across enterprises, AI agents are connecting to internal systems, using APIs, accessing data, and taking actions on behalf of employees. But while AI adoption is accelerating, governance, visibility, and control have not kept pace.

Speakeasy is building the Enterprise AI Control Plane.

We help organizations securely connect AI systems to their APIs, tools, and internal infrastructure while providing the identity, governance, permissions, auditability, and observability required to operate AI at scale.

Our customers include companies like Mistral, Verizon, Cisco, Vercel, Redis, Glean, LaunchDarkly, PlanetScale, and Docusign. We are backed by Google Ventures, FPV, and Quiet Capital. Today, hundreds of companies rely on Speakeasy infrastructure across API platforms, MCP deployments, and enterprise AI systems.

We’re a highly technical team based across San Francisco and London, building at the intersection of AI, infrastructure, security, developer platforms, and enterprise software.

The Role

Forward Deployed Engineers sit at the center of our customers, product, and engineering teams.

You will work directly with engineering leaders, platform teams, security teams, and AI initiatives at some of the most sophisticated companies deploying AI today.

This is not a traditional solutions engineering role. You’ll operate across pre-sales, deployment, product feedback, and engineering, acting as the technical bridge between our customers and our platform.

You will partner closely with customers from initial evaluation through production deployment. You’ll lead technical discovery, design integrations, solve architecture challenges, build proofs-of-concept, influence product direction, and help define how enterprises securely adopt AI agents and MCP infrastructure.

One week you may be helping a customer connect internal APIs to AI systems. The next week you may be designing access control models, debugging identity flows, implementing MCP governance, or working with our product team on entirely new capabilities driven by customer feedback.

You will often be the technical face of Speakeasy and one of the first people customers trust with mission-critical AI initiatives.

What You’ll Do

Drive Technical Sales

Partner with Account Executives on strategic customer opportunities

Lead technical discovery and architecture conversations with prospective customers

Design and deliver demos, proofs-of-concept, and pilot implementations

Help customers evaluate how Speakeasy fits into their AI, security, and infrastructure strategy

Translate customer requirements into deployment plans and product feedback

Serve as the technical owner for complex opportunities from evaluation through production rollout

Deploy and Integrate

Lead customer implementations of the Speakeasy AI Control Plane

Design integrations with APIs, MCP servers, SaaS platforms, identity providers, and internal systems

Build prototypes, proofs-of-concept, and deployment architectures

Troubleshoot complex technical issues across customer environments

Partner With Customers

Act as a trusted technical advisor to engineering, platform, security, and AI teams

Translate customer requirements into technical solutions

Guide customers through architecture decisions and implementation tradeoffs

Drive successful production rollouts and long-term adoption

Build strong relationships with engineering leaders, platform teams, security teams, and AI stakeholders

Shape the Product

Identify patterns across customer deployments

Influence product roadmap and prioritization

Work directly with engineering to improve platform capabilities

Create reusable deployment patterns, documentation, and best practices

Build

Write production-quality code when needed

Build internal tooling and deployment accelerators

Create reference implementations and demos

Prototype new product ideas alongside customers

Who You Are

Successful candidates often come from backgrounds such as:

Founding Engineer

Forward Deployed Engineer

Solutions Engineer

Platform Engineer

Infrastructure Engineer

Technical Founder

You are comfortable moving between code, architecture discussions, customer conversations, and product strategy.

We are particularly excited if you:

Have 5+ years of software engineering experience

Have built or deployed APIs, developer platforms, infrastructure products, or security systems

Have experience working directly with customers in technical environments

Can quickly understand unfamiliar systems and navigate ambiguity

Enjoy solving open-ended problems with incomplete information

Have strong communication skills and can explain complex technical concepts clearly

Care deeply about customer outcomes

Bonus Points

AI agent, MCP, or LLM application experience

Identity and access management experience

Security, governance, or compliance background

Experience with enterprise software deployments

Startup or founding-team experience

What Success Looks Like

Within your first 6 months, you will:

Become a trusted technical advisor to both prospective and existing customers

Independently lead technical evaluations, pilots, and enterprise deployments

Help customers securely deploy AI agents, MCP servers, and internal tools at scale

Identify product gaps and influence the roadmap through direct customer engagement

Establish best practices for enterprise AI governance and agent infrastructure

Drive meaningful customer outcomes that directly impact company growth and adoption

Why Speakeasy

We’re building infrastructure for one of the most important transitions happening in software.

As AI systems evolve from chat interfaces into operational agents, every company will need governance, visibility, identity, and control over how those systems interact with the world.

We believe the Enterprise AI Control Plane becomes a foundational layer of modern infrastructure.

Joining now means helping define that category from the beginning.

Compensation & Benefits

$180,000-$230,000 base salary + meaningful equity

Medical, dental, and vision coverage

401(k)

Flexible PTO

Regular company offsites

Offices in San Francisco and London

Small team, high ownership, significant impact