Forward Deployed Engineer

📍 Locations: San Francisco (Hybrid), New York (Hybrid), Columbus (Hybrid), or Remote (US)

The Forward Deployed Engineer is a perfect role for someone who is technical enough to sit in a customer's codebase and docs, curious enough to become the deepest product expert in the room, and wants to own the customer relationship at a fast-moving startup. You'll be on calls with enterprise engineering and docs teams every week, you'll own a book of accounts end to end, and you'll be the person who figures out how to make ReadMe work for whatever they're trying to do, not the person who files the ticket and waits.

At ReadMe the Sales team finds companies that we can solve problems for, and you take over from there. Your role is to oversee a swift and effective implementation, partner with the customer to have a successful first year, identify opportunities for growth and optimization, and make sure the right resources get tapped in to support whatever the customer needs to be successful with ReadMe. You'll solve most technical questions yourself, and know when and how to pull in Engineering or Solutions Architects for the rest.

🦉 What we do

We're a small team of humans (and one owl) working together to do big things, and that’s where you come in. In this role you’ll have a transformational impact on ReadMe across both the trajectory of the business and our thriving culture.

ReadMe helps more than 5,000 leading startups and tech companies build beautiful, personalized, and interactive developer hubs. If you’ve ever visited the developer docs for Amazon, Samsara, or Nvidia, you’ve used ReadMe!

We love what we do because it’s so much more than just documentation. We’re providing tools for teams to build a better developer experience and make their products and APIs easier to use. We’ve got great support from our investors at Accel who led our Series A, and our interview process reflects the open, caring, and whimsical culture we want to maintain as we scale.

✅ What you’ll do here

• Own a book of enterprise accounts end to end. Onboarding, adoption, renewal assistance, and expansion. Be the primary technical and strategic contact for each.
• Be on customer calls regularly, including: implementation kickoffs, working sessions, QBRs, and escalations. This is a customer-facing role, not a ticket-queue role.
• Act as the product SME for your accounts. Know ReadMe deeply enough to answer product questions in real time, and debug alongside customers when something isn't working.
• Get hands-on with the technical implementation. Review OAS files, help wire up CI/CD syncing via the ReadMe CLI or API, troubleshoot custom JS/CSS and auth setups, and prototype solutions before handing off to Engineering.
• Build AI into how you work. Use AI tools to draft implementation plans, analyze account health across your book, triage and summarize customer requests, prototype scripts, and automate the repetitive parts of the job so you spend more time solving real problems.
• Identify expansion and growth opportunities across your book and partner with Sales to close them.
• Advocate for customers internally, surface health risks early, and feed structured product and bug feedback to Product and Engineering.

💙 You’ll love this job if you are…

• Passionate about working with others; you’d be collaborating with lots of new customers, and our Sales, Product, Support and Enterprise Engineering teams!
• An outstanding communicator, very organized, and able to manage multiple projects at once.
• Technical enough to read an OpenAPI spec, poke at a customer's HTML/CSS/JS, understand SSO and auth flows, and use Git and a CLI comfortably. You don't need to be a software engineer, but you should be able to hold your own with one.
• Someone who uses AI as a working tool. You've built prompts, workflows, or small automations that changed how you actually get work done, and you're eager to keep doing that.
• A problem solver who'd rather figure out the answer than escalate it. You enjoy the puzzle of making a product bend to a customer's real-world constraints.

🌱 How you’ll grow within one month

• Learn and collaborate from people around the ReadMe org about our product and what it can do for customers.
• Start to develop relationships with your book of enterprise customers
• Sit in on customer calls with the team and start running your own kickoffs with new customers
• Complete a hands-on ReadMe build i.e., set up a hub from an OAS file, configure SSO, ship a custom page, so you've done what customers do.

🪴 Within three months, you’ll…

• Be the first line of technical resolution for your accounts. You answer and debug most questions yourself.
• Have built at least one AI-assisted workflow that saves you or the team meaningful time each week.

🌳 Within six months, you’ll...

• Be performing to the KPIs of the role - time to implementation, NPS scores, NRR, etc.
• Consult on how we can position our roadmap to maximize the enterprise experience in the long term.
• Identify expansion conversations in your book to forward to Sales

🛣️ What’s the hiring process like?

1. We can’t wait to read your resume and (hopefully personality-filled) cover letter! Let us know what excites you about the role, and help us get to know you better!
2. If we think there could be a good fit, we’ll set up a 30-minute Zoom call with Kirby, one of our Account Executives. She’ll tell you more about the role and learn more about you and your experience.
3. Next, you’ll have a 30-minute Zoom interview with Dan, one of our TCSMs. You’ll dive a little deeper into your background and past customer experience.
4. Then, we’ll invite you to a virtual “onsite” over Zoom! You’ll meet members of our GTM team, people from across ReadMe, and dig a little deeper into your technical skills.
5. We’ll let you know how things went within a week! If it still seems like a good fit all around, we’ll extend you an offer! If not, we will update you to let you know so you aren’t left hanging.

✨ Our benefits include…

• Unlimited PTO with a three-week minimum. 🏝
• Fully covered medical, dental, and vision insurance for you, and your dependents. 🩺
• A One Medical membership. 🧑‍⚕️
• A wellness stipend for therapy of up to $350 per month for up to 6 months. 😌
• A wellness stipend of up to $150 per month. 🏋️
• One-to-one donation matching of up to $1,000 per year. 💸
• Twelve weeks of paid parental leave after the birth or adoption of a child. 🐣
• Work from home office stipend of $500. 🖥️
• Offsite retreats to get together with coworkers and plan for the quarter ahead. ✈️
• Take a look at ourhandbook for more information on our benefits! 📘

Not sure if you’d be the right fit? Apply anyway! We’d love to see your application.

At ReadMe, we’re committed to cultivating a diverse and inclusive workplace. We welcome people of all different backgrounds, experiences, abilities, and perspectives. We are an equal opportunity employer and a pleasant and supportive place to work. We'd love to have you come join us here! ReadMe is open to hiring folks fully remote in the US, hybrid, or in-person at our New York, San Francisco, or Columbus HQ.