Staff Forward Deployed Engineer

What's the opportunity?

In the last six months, we experienced an increase in demand for software engineers who work closely with our most strategic customers and help bridge the gap between their business goals and our AI Agent for Customer Service, Fin.

As a Staff Forward Deployed Engineer, you’ll work directly with these customers and our Go-To-Market team to deeply understand use cases and design, build, and implement solutions for them. You’ll operate with a high degree of autonomy and trust: expected to set direction, own outcomes, and represent Intercom confidently in high-stakes customer contexts. As a result, you’ll play a pivotal role in revolutionising how our customers scale their support operations while unlocking meaningful business impact.

In addition, you’ll lead by example: acting as a cross-functional force multiplier who influences product direction with field insight and helps define what Forward Deployed Engineering means at Intercom.

If you’re looking for ownership, creativity, and the chance to steer R&D and Go-To-Market teams in a fast-paced environment, this role is for you.

What will I be doing?

• Lead the adoption of Fin by helping prospects unlock the power of Intercom’s AI capabilities to automate and scale their support operations. 
• Embed deeply with strategic customers to understand their business challenges and technical requirements, acting as a proactive partner who steers them toward outstanding results with Fin.
• Work hands-on with customers’ technical teams as a confident subject-matter expert and trusted advisor, coding side-by-side to drive projects to completion.
• Collaborate closely with Sales, Success, and Product teams, and actively influence their work to ensure seamless customer experiences, project success, and timely, actionable product feedback.
• Lead and evolve the Forward Deployed Engineering function, sharing insights and shaping how the role operates as it grows.
• Leverage connections across our strategic accounts to anticipate challenges, align stakeholders quickly and influence decisions that drive us to success.
• Provide guidance and mentorship to Forward Deployed Engineers and Solutions Engineers as we continue to scale.
  
  

What skills do I need?

• Ideally, you’ve built an exciting SaaS product in your previous roles and loved the satisfaction that comes with knowing that people around the world are using something you’ve created. Bonus points if you’re a former founder or early engineer at a startup.
• Demonstrated track record of autonomous decision-making, prioritisation and accountability for outcomes: such as 2+ years serving as the primary technical leader for a team.
• You are interested in AI/ML and able to ramp up on unfamiliar concepts quickly: absorbing new capabilities, limitations and trade-offs fast enough to guide customers and internal teams.
• You set the high bar for cross-functional collaboration. Skilled at navigating organisational boundaries, rallying diverse teams, and steering everyone toward the best outcome for our customers and Intercom.
• Deep knowledge of a high-level programming language (for example, JavaScript, Python, Ruby, etc.) but it doesn’t need to be a language that we use here. Great people are effective and learn what we use quickly (or introduce us to better ways of working).
• Decisive and pragmatic: know when to prototype and ship fast yourself, and when to escalate or delegate. Always keeping quality high and business goals front-of-mind.
• Proficient using and writing REST APIs to integrate systems effectively.
• Strong communicator who tailors the message to any audience. Can easily talk to engineers and non-technical audiences about the same topics at the right level of detail.
• Willing to travel and work on-site with customers to build strong relationships and deeply understand their needs.
  
  

Benefits