Forward Deployed Engineer

About Exa

We raised a $250M Series C to build the search engine for AIs. Led by a16z, with existing investors Benchmark, Lightspeed, and YC doubling down, the round brings Exa's valuation to $2.2 billion.

Exa is building a search engine for the AI era. Our Search API currently powers Agents, Fortune 500s, and AI labs as we transform an industry that hasn't been disrupted since the 90s. We're a largely SF-based team of ~100 from Harvard, MIT, Meta, Google Research, ex-founders, and dropouts alike. We are rapidly building the most intelligent search engine in history. We're high agency, low-ego, and united by the feeling that this is one of the last problems worth getting right.

About the Role

Forward Deployed Engineers are the technical tip of the spear at Exa. You sit at the intersection of product, engineering, and customer success, turning complex integrations into production wins. You need to be someone who can ship code in the morning and close a deal in the afternoon.

You'll embed directly with customers' engineering teams to solve real problems with Exa's API. You'll context-switch constantly across accounts, codebases, and industries. When something breaks, you fix it. When a feature is missing, you build it. When a customer is stuck, you unblock them before they even ask. This is not a support role. You are an engineer who sells and a seller who ships.

In this role, you will:

• Take a customer from first cold outbound to production integration to closed deal

• Build and ship demos, tutorials, and sample applications that show what Exa can do

• Debug and resolve technical issues across the full stack, from API behavior to frontend rendering

• Identify patterns in customer feedback and translate them into product improvements, shipping fixes yourself when possible

• Run many sales and technical calls each week, adapting your pitch to CTOs, engineers, and PMs alike

• Analyze usage data and customer interactions to spot churn risk early and drive expansion

Requirements

• Several years of programming experience. You could build and deploy a production server from scratch

• Track record of high performance in demanding environments, whether that's a top CS program, a competitive sport, a startup, or something else entirely

• Comfort with direct customer interaction. You've sold something, supported someone, or otherwise held your own in high-stakes conversations

• High tolerance for context-switching, ambiguity, and sustained intensity

• Willingness to travel as needed for customer engagements

You might excel if you...

• Have built and shipped user-facing products end to end

• Have closed revenue or driven commercial outcomes at a previous company

• Thrive in early-stage environments where your job description changes monthly

• Are energized by the idea of being the person customers think of when they think of Exa

• Care deeply about the problem of organizing the world's knowledge and making it accessible to machines

This is an in-person opportunity in San Francisco. We're happy to sponsor international candidates (e.g., STEM OPT, OPT, H1B, O1, E3). In addition to premium healthcare benefits (medical, dental, vision), we also offer fertility benefits and a monthly wellness stipend to all of our employees.