Forward-Deployed Engineer

About the role

We are looking for a Forward-Deployed Engineer to join our Professional Services team. This is not a traditional consulting role—you will embed directly with our most strategic enterprise customers to drive transformational outcomes across frontend modernization, platform migrations, and AI adoption.

• 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.
• Conduct technical assessments and code audits, analyzing customer codebases for performance bottlenecks, architectural anti-patterns, and optimization opportunities—delivering actionable roadmaps that drive measurable improvements.
• Architect and implement high-performance Next.js applications, leveraging App Router, Server Components, streaming, ISR, edge functions, and advanced rendering strategies to meet enterprise scale and performance requirements.
• Optimize Core Web Vitals and application performance, using tools like Vercel Speed Insights to diagnose issues and implement fixes that improve SEO, conversion rates, and user experience.
• Build production AI solutions using Vercel's AI SDK and AI Cloud—including conversational interfaces, production agents, MCP servers, and agentic workflows that transform customer operations.
• Embed with strategic customers to build production applications—working within their systems, understanding their constraints, and shipping TypeScript code that goes live.
• Drive enablement and knowledge transfer through workshops, pair programming, and documentation—ensuring customer teams can extend and maintain solutions independently.
• Navigate complex enterprise environments by building relationships with stakeholders across engineering, product, and executive teams—translating technical capabilities into business outcomes.
• Participate in pre-sales activities by providing technical expertise during discovery calls, scoping sessions, and proposal development for migrations, audits, and AI transformation engagements.
• Contribute to our service evolution by identifying repeatable patterns, building reusable components, and sharing implementation insights back to Product and Engineering teams.

About you

• 5+ years of experience in software engineering with at least 2 years in a customer-facing technical role (consulting, solutions engineering, forward deployed engineering, or technical founder experience).
• Expert-level TypeScript skills—this is your primary language. You write production TypeScript daily and have strong opinions on type safety, patterns, and tooling.
• Deep expertise in Next.js, with a proven track record of architecting and delivering complex applications using App Router, Server Components, server-side rendering (SSR), static generation (SSG), incremental static regeneration (ISR), and edge functions.
• Demonstrated experience leading frontend migrations—you've modernized legacy applications to Next.js, navigated incremental adoption strategies, and understand the challenges of migrating large codebases in production environments.
• Mastery of React and its ecosystem, including advanced state management, performance optimization, and modern patterns like streaming, suspense, and concurrent features.
• Production experience with LLMs and AI applications, including prompt engineering, agent development, and tool use patterns. Familiarity with Vercel's AI SDK is strongly preferred.
• 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 drive outcomes.
• 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 approach.
• Business acumen to understand customer objectives, translate technical capabilities into ROI, and identify expansion opportunities throughout engagement lifecycles.
• Willingness to travel 25-40% to customer sites for embedded work and relationship building.

Bonus if you

• Have led large-scale migrations from legacy frameworks (Create React App, Gatsby, custom webpack setups) to Next.js in enterprise environments.
• Have expertise in performance optimization and Core Web Vitals, with experience diagnosing and fixing LCP, CLS, and INP issues at scale.
• Have experience with Model Context Protocol (MCP), building MCP servers, or implementing complex tool-use patterns in production AI applications.
• Have led enterprise AI transformation initiatives, including building production agents that automated manual processes or replaced legacy systems.
• Have worked with micro-frontends, module federation, or multi-team frontend architectures.
• Have contributed to the Next.js, React, or AI SDK open-source projects, or maintain popular related libraries.
• Have experience with enterprise deployment patterns including security reviews, compliance requirements, and multi-region architectures.
• Have a background in financial services, healthcare, retail/e-commerce, or media—industries with complex frontend ecosystems and growing AI adoption.
• Have spoken at conferences or published thought leadership on frontend architecture, migrations, or AI applications.