Forward Deployed Engineer, Onboarding at Assemblyai

Why AssemblyAI AssemblyAI builds the best-in-class Voice AI models powering the next generation of voice applications. Our models serve 600M+ inference calls monthly, process 1M+ hours of audio daily, and power 2 billion+ end-user experiences. The Voice AI space is at an inflection point; we’re looking for folks truly excited to join a small team and help define the future of the industry. We are one of the most capital-efficient AI companies on the planet - with under 100 people generating roughly $500K ARR per employee, we sit among the top 5 most revenue-dense teams within the fastest-growing AI companies today. That's not an accident; it's a deliberate choice to stay lean, move fast, and give every person on the team outsized ownership and impact. With thousands of customers including Granola, Fireflies, Figure AI, and CallRail, the company has real scale - processing over 2 million hours of audio daily and handling more than 1 million API calls every day. This is a rare growth-stage opportunity where the business is proven and the trajectory is steep, but the team is still small enough that your fingerprints are on everything. If you've ever felt buried under layers of bureaucracy, starved of real ownership, or frustrated watching your work disappear into a slow-moving org, AssemblyAI is built differently. The company operates as a true meritocracy, with no heavy planning or approval processes and no gatekeeping on the tools or information you need. For anyone who genuinely cares about voice AI, not as a trend to chase, but as a technology to build, this is the place where the most interesting problems at the most interesting scale are being solved by a team small enough that you'll actually know everyone's name. We’re committed to creating a space where our employees can bring their full selves to work and have equal opportunity to succeed. No matter your race, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, religion, origin, ability, age, veteran status, if joining this mission speaks to you, we encourage you to apply! About the role: We’re looking for a Forward Deployed Engineer to drive new-customer activation across our product lines. This person will own the front of our GTM funnel—the moments between a developer’s first API call and their first month of production traffic—proactively reaching out as usage ramps, debugging deep into customer code when a deal stalls on a technical blocker, tuning model configurations to fit each use case, and stewarding leads through the security, paperwork, and architecture decisions it takes to get to consistent production usage. This person should have a strong software-engineering background paired with the instincts of a great seller, being equal parts engineer and quota-carrier, and be deeply interested in the developer experience of building with voice AI. This is a cross-functional role that requires partnership with our Sales, Support, Product, and Engineering teams. You’ll be willing to wear many hats, passionate about unblocking customers, and excited to operate with high energy across many concurrent leads with expansive ownership. What You’ll Do: • Own a portfolio of in-flight leads across AssemblyAI’s product lines, driving them from first API call to consistent production usage against a quarterly new-customer goal. • Reach out proactively the moment a developer’s usage ramps, diagnosing what’s blocking them from scaling and removing it before they go quiet. • Read unfamiliar customer codebases quickly and ship working patches alongside their engineers, debugging real-time audio, WebSocket, and latency issues directly in their service. • Tune model configurations for each use case—end-of-turn detection, keyterms, language coverage, async vs. real-time—and translate the tradeoffs to technical and non-technical stakeholders alike. • Run discovery and architecture conversations about customer use cases, knowing when to push back and when to lean in. • Steward technical wins through to commercial close: DPAs, MSAs, security reviews, stakeholder mapping, and multi-threading the buying team. • Hand off graduated accounts cleanly with the context and written history required for a smooth transition. • Aggregate lead feedback into structured signals for Product and Engineering, making sure the self-serve experience improves measurably because of the patterns you surface. • Build internal tooling—agents, dashboard, AI workflows—that help the team operate ahead of the wave as lead volume grows. What You’ll Need: • 2+ years of relevant experience as a software engineer, forward-deployed engineer, sales engineer, solutions architect, technical account manager, or similar customer-facing engineering role. • Strong hands-on engineering skills—comfortable reading an unfamiliar Python or JavaScript/Node service, finding the bug, and writing the patch. • Working fluency with real-time and streaming protocols, including WebSockets, audio pipelines, and latency budgets. • Track record of carrying a number—net new customers, activation rate, expansion ARR, or similar—and consistently hitting it. • Excellent written and verbal communication skills. You’ll be the primary face of AssemblyAI in hundreds of customer Slack channels, email threads, and in-person or virtual meetings concurrently. • Aggressive use of AI tooling in your own workflow (Claude Code, Cursor, Devin, custom agents); bonus if you’ve built or shipped your own. • High sense of urgency and ownership, with the ability to manage multiple concurrent deals and context-switch frequently. • Prior experience with voice AI, ASR, speech-to-text, telephony, or audio infrastructure is a plus. Pay Transparency: AssemblyAI strives to recruit and retain exceptional talent from diverse backgrounds while ensuring pay equity across our team. Our salary ranges are set to be competitive for our size, stage, and industry, and reflect just one component of the full compensation, benefits, and rewards we offer. Salary determinations consider a variety of factors, including relevant experience, technical depth, skills demonstrated during the interview process, and maintaining internal equity with peers on the team. The range shared below represents a general expectation for the posted position. However, we are open to considering candidates who may fall above or below the outlined experience level—in those cases, we will communicate any adjustments to the expected salary range. The range provided applies to candidates located in the United States. For candidates outside of the U.S., compensation ranges may differ; any adjustments will be communicated throughout the interview process. Salary range: $150,000 - 200,000 OTE The expected total compensation for this role is listed above (including base salary and commission). Our total compensation package includes competitive equity grants, 100% employer-paid benefits, and working alongside the team in our San Francisco or New York City office. A 401k match up to 4% is offered to all US-based full time team members. AI to Interview: If you’re selected for an interview, please review this resource to better understand how AssemblyAI approaches the use of AI in our interview process. GDPR privacy notice: Candidates from the EU should review this job applicant privacy notice before applying. Keep Exploring AssemblyAI: Speech-to-text | Streaming speech-to-text | Speech Understanding | LLM Gateway Try the Playground Our $50M Series C fundraise Check us out on YouTube!