Forward Deployed Engineer in San Francisco, California at Zendesk

Location: Remote, New York, United States of America | Remote, Washington D.C., United States of America | Remote, California, United States of America | Austin, Texas, United States of America | San Francisco, California, United States of America

Requisition ID: R34752

Position_Type: Full time

Job Description

Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) — AI & Solutions

Join us at Zendesk, where we're on a mission to power exceptional service for every person on the planet. We're accelerating that ambition by building products rooted in AI, automation, and intelligent customer experiences, because behind every interaction lies an opportunity to make a human connection.

We’re hiring a Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) to join our Technical Presales team. Where you’ll be an elite hybrid: part software engineer, part strategic consultant. You’ll do more than just sell the dream, you’ll execute what’s possible.

In this role you’ll be embedded with strategic customers to design, build, and deliver production-grade AI solutions that unlock measurable ROI. You’ll translate customer needs into robust integrations, architect LLM-powered workflows, and collaborate cross-functionally to turn real-world friction into product improvements.

You will play a vital role in growing Zendesk’s enterprise footprint by delivering high-impact, scalable AI deployments. Building trusted technical partnerships, delivering crisp, production-ready solutions, and amplifying Zendesk’s AI capabilities within complex, high-value accounts.

What you’ll be doing

• Lead end-to-end technical delivery of AI agent and LLM-powered solutions: discovery, scoping, system design, PoC, production rollout, and operational handoff.

• Build production-grade integrations and custom connectors (APIs, data pipelines, RAG systems) to surface high-quality signals into Zendesk AI workflows.

• Troubleshoot and resolve escalated technical blockers across data, infra, and model behavior. Act as the field’s final line of defense for complex issues.

• Collaborate closely with Sales engineering and product teams to map undocumented systems, define integration patterns, and implement solutions.

• Translate customer learnings into product feedback and prioritized roadmap items; partner with Zendesk Product and Engineering to reduce future deployment friction.

What you bring to the role

• Founder mindset: comfortable navigating ambiguity, mapping unknown systems, and delivering results without a predefined playbook.

• Engineering rigor: 5+ years building production systems; strong software engineering fundamentals and attention to quality.

• Full-stack fluency: experience across frontend (React/TypeScript), backend (Python / Node / Java / Ruby), REST/GraphQL APIs, and cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, or Azure).

• AI/LLM expertise: practical experience with LLMs, prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), vector stores, and evaluation/guardrails for model safety and reliability.

• Systems integrator: proven ability to design secure data ingestion, ETL/data pipelines, and work with diverse data stores and message systems.

• Excellent communicator: able to present trade-offs to executives and pair-program with customer engineers; strong written runbooks and documentation skills.

• Travel readiness: willing to travel as needed to customer sites (typical range 25–50%).

Basic qualifications

• 5+ years software engineering experience delivering production systems.

• Proficient in Python and JavaScript/TypeScript; experience with at least one backend language (Java, Ruby, or Go) preferred.

• Hands-on experience deploying or integrating LLM-based solutions in production (RAG, vector DBs, model evaluation).

• Practical experience with cloud platforms (AWS/GCP/Azure) and containerized deployments (Docker, Kubernetes).

• Comfortable working onsite with customers and traveling up to 50% as required.

Preferred qualifications

• Prior FDE, Professional Services, Solutions Engineering, or Technical Account Management experience delivering enterprise AI or SaaS deployments.

• Experience with specific LLM tooling and frameworks (LangChain, LlamaIndex, Haystack, or similar).

• Familiarity with Zendesk products and APIs, or experience integrating customer support/contact-center platforms.

• Background in observability and operationalization of ML/AI (monitoring, SLOs, cost controls, retraining pipelines).

• Experience with data governance, PII handling, and enterprise security/compliance constraints.

The US annualized OTE (On Target Earnings) range for this position is $200,000.00-$300,000.00 with a pay mix of 80/20 (base/commission). This position may also be eligible for bonus, benefits, or related incentives. While this range reflects the minimum and maximum value for new hire salaries for the position across all US locations, the offer for the successful candidate for this position will be based on job related capabilities, applicable experience, and other factors such as work location. Please note that the compensation details listed in US role postings reflect the base salary only (or OTE for commissions based roles), and do not include bonus, benefits, or related incentives.

The intelligent heart of customer experience

Zendesk software was built to bring a sense of calm to the chaotic world of customer service. Today we power billions of conversations with brands you know and love.

Zendesk believes in offering our people a fulfilling and inclusive experience. Our hybrid way of working, enables us to purposefully come together in person, at one of our many Zendesk offices around the world, to connect, collaborate and learn whilst also giving our people the flexibility to work remotely for part of the week.

As part of our commitment to fairness and transparency, we inform all applicants that artificial intelligence (AI) or automated decision systems may be used to screen or evaluate applications for this position, in accordance with Company guidelines and applicable law.

Zendesk is an equal opportunity employer, and we’re proud of our ongoing efforts to foster global diversity, equity, & inclusion in the workplace. Individuals seeking employment and employees at Zendesk are considered without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, medical condition, ancestry, disability, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. We are an AA/EEO/Veterans/Disabled employer. If you are based in the United States and would like more information about your EEO rights under the law, please click here.

Zendesk endeavors to make reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities and disabled veterans pursuant to applicable federal and state law. If you are an individual with a disability and require a reasonable accommodation to submit this application, complete any pre-employment testing, or otherwise participate in the employee selection process, please send an e-mail to peopleandplaces@zendesk.com with your specific accommodation request.