Forward-Deployed Engineer
Embed with enterprise customers to modernize frontend apps with Next.js, optimize performance, and build AI solutions using Vercel's tools, while traveling 25-40% to customer sites.
- Compensation
- Not disclosed
- Location
- Hybrid - London, Berlin
- Work setup
- Hybrid
- Seniority
- Not specified
- Employment
- Not specified
- Experience
- 2+ years
- Category
- Solutions engineering
- Posted
Skills
Must have
- 6+ years of experience in software engineering with at least 2 years in a customer-facing technical role (consulting, solutions architecture, forward deployed engineering, or technical founder experie
- Experience using AI instrumentation such as harnesses, skills, and MCPs to build and deploy web applications, backend systems, and/or agentic workflows.
- High agency with comfort in ambiguity - you thrive when given a problem to solve rather than a task to complete, and you can navigate complex organizations to create a plan and drive a project.
- Exceptional communication skills with the ability to conduct technical discovery, present to executives, mentor engineers, and build lasting customer relationships - all with a low-ego, collaborative
- Business acumen to understand customer objectives, translate technical capabilities into ROI, and identify expansion opportunities throughout engagement lifecycles.
- Willingness to travel occasionally to customer sites for embedded work and relationship building.
Full description
About Vercel:
Vercel is the agentic infrastructure company, freeing people and agents to ship what's next. For more than a decade we've helped builders move from idea to production with speed, security, and exceptional developer experience.
Now we're scaling our products for both agents and people to ship and run software, built in the open and trusted by OpenAI, PayPal, Ramp, Supreme, and millions of developers worldwide.
About the role
We are looking for a Senior Forward-Deployed Engineer to join our Professional Services team. This role is focused on working directly alongside developer teams in our most strategic enterprise customers to drive transformational outcomes across frontend modernization, platform migrations, and AI adoption.
In this role, you will lead complex Next.js migrations, architect high-performance applications, and build production AI solutions - all within customer environments. You'll work hands-on-keyboard alongside customer teams, whether you're migrating a legacy React application to App Router, conducting a deep-dive code audit, or deploying production agents using Vercel's eve framework and AI SDK.
Our Forward-Deployed Engineers operate with high agency and autonomy. You'll navigate ambiguous enterprise environments, assess technical debt, design migration strategies, and deliver measurable business value - all while building long-term relationships that expand our partnership with each customer.
There are two main profiles for this role: Next.js experts, and AI builders. Next.js experts work on deep customer code optimization, performance audits, AEO and SEO, and teaching customers how to build Next.js apps with AI instrumentation - such as Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, etc with Next.js and Vercel agent skills. The AI builder profile is less focused on deep Next.js experience, and more on identifying, evangelizing, and building AI applications and agentic workflows. Your job in this role will be to understand customers’ businesses, scope, design, and build AI agents, and prove their value. The two profiles are not mutually exclusive and we appreciate expertise in both.
You will report to the Global Manager of Forward Deployed Engineering.
What you'll do
- Build production AI solutions using Vercel's eve framework, AI SDK, and AI Cloud infrastructure, including conversational interfaces, production agents, MCP servers, and agentic workflows that transform customer operations.
- Lead complex frontend migrations - modernizing legacy React, Vue, or other frameworks to Next.js, including Pages to App Router transitions, incremental adoption strategies, and large-scale codebase transformations. Automation of migrations is key to engineering efficiency.