Forward Deployed Engineer

We are looking for Render's first Forward Deployed Engineer to work hands-on with our most strategic customers. Our largest contracts and fastest-growing AI startups are scaling on Render, and this role provides them with a dedicated, concierge-level technical partnership. You will balance two motions: white-glove engagement with our top accounts, where you work closely with the customer's engineering team as a trusted technical partner, and scoped onboarding intensives that get high-growth startups confidently building on the platform. As the first FDE in our Field Engineering organization, you will define the playbook for this function, prove the model, and shape how it scales.

• Work closely with Render's top accounts as their dedicated technical partner, providing concierge service across architecture reviews, migration planning, and hands-on delivery.
• Run scoped onboarding intensives for high-growth startups, from intake and success criteria through hands-on-keyboard execution.
• Lead the database side of customer engagements, including Postgres architecture, performance tuning, and complex data migrations from Heroku, AWS, and other cloud providers.
• Drive activation and expansion in strategic accounts: turn major credit grants into durable production adoption, surface expansion signals from your technical work, and partner with the account team to convert them into revenue.
• Own the ongoing technical relationship for your accounts: proactive architecture and health reviews, collaborative roadmap sessions, incident follow-up and RCA, and escalation point for hard technical problems, working closely with the account team.
• Build the FDE playbook: qualification criteria, engagement templates, success metrics, and reference architectures that make the program repeatable.
• Act as a high-signal feedback channel to product and engineering, translating customer friction into prioritized product input.
• Partner with Account Managers and Customer Engineers to ensure smooth handoffs after each engagement and durable long-term coverage.

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