Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE)

<p><img style="max-width: 100%;" src="https://gallery-cdn.breezy.hr/55397/Screen%20Shot%202019-02-19%20at%2013.56.59.png" alt="" width="600"></p>
<p>OfferZen's client, Wonderful.ai is hiring for a Forward Deployed Engineer to join their growing team!</p>
<p>Wonderful.ai is a young start-up with $300M raised, and is now valued at $2B after 18 months of operations. They've grown to 600 employees across 32 countries, with an engineering team that includes people from Google, Palantir, Databricks, Microsoft, and Slack.&nbsp;They enable enterprises to build, test, deploy, and monitor AI agents for their&nbsp;most complex needs, serving customers and employees seamlessly across voice, chat,&nbsp;email, and back-office systems in any language or cultural context.</p>
<h3><br>Role Overview</h3>
<p>As a Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) at Wonderful, you’ll solve high-impact,&nbsp;real-world problems alongside enterprise customers and own work from first principles&nbsp;through production outcomes.</p>
<p><br>You’ll work directly with customers to understand critical workflows, design AI-driven&nbsp;solutions, and deploy agents that operate reliably in production. You’ll own projects&nbsp;end-to-end from problem definition and system design to launch and iteration - and be&nbsp;accountable for real business impact.</p>
<p><br>This is a hands on-generalist role for engineers who enjoy navigating ambiguity,&nbsp;learning quickly, and working across systems while partnering with enterprises as they&nbsp;become AI-driven organizations.</p>
<h3><br>What You’ll Do</h3>
<ul>
<li>Partner with customers to understand operational challenges and success&nbsp;criteria</li>
<li>Translate open-ended problems into clear technical designs and&nbsp;implementations</li>
<li>Build AI agents that integrate with customer systems and perform real&nbsp;tasks</li>
<li>Own deployments, including reliability, performance, and continuous&nbsp;improvement</li>
<li>Test with real data, measure outcomes, and iterate based on results</li>
<li>Collaborate with Product &amp; Engineering to ship high-quality solutions</li>
<li>Contribute to tools, documentation, and best practices that scale customer&nbsp;delivery</li>
</ul>
<h3>What We’re Looking For</h3>
<ul>
<li>5+ years of experience in software engineering or technical&nbsp;problem-solving roles</li>
<li>Strong fundamentals in software design, system thinking</li>
<li>Experience working across systems, integrations, and data flows</li>
<li>Comfort working directly with customers and owning ambiguous problems</li>
<li>Clear communication skills and a strong ownership mindset</li>
<li>Curiosity and interest in building AI-powered systems that work in practice</li>
</ul>
<h4>Nice to Have</h4>
<ul>
<li>Experience in forward-deployed, solutions engineering, or customer-facing&nbsp;roles</li>
<li>Exposure to AI agents, automation, or conversational systems</li>
<li>Experience operating and improving production systems</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Logistics</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Location: must be based in or willing to relocate to Johannesburg (office is in Rosebank)</li>
<li>Office attendance: ~4 days a week on-site, typically at a client's office, not Wonderful's own office</li>
<li>Citizenship/visa: no strict requirement to be SA citizen, but no visa sponsorship available — candidate must already have the right to work in SA</li>
<li>Compensation expectation: targeting 95th–99th percentile of local market rates - they’re willing to pay top of the range for talent, skill and experience</li>
<li>Pay structure: paid in ZAR, but employee can choose to anchor salary value to USD (converted at spot rate monthly) if they wish</li>
</ul>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>If you're interested, please apply directly to this - we are recruiting on behalf of Wonderful and would need to run the interview process with you.</strong></p>