{"id":773685,"url":"https://alion.io/job/offerzen-forward-deployed-engineer-fde","title":"Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE)","company":{"id":44290,"name":"OfferZen","domain":"offerzen.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/offerzen","size_band":"501-1000","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":true,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Greenhouse","truth_index":null},"role":"Solutions","role_family":"Solutions","seniority":"senior","employment_type":null,"work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Cape Town, South Africa","South Africa"],"countries":["ZA"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":{"min_usd":31000,"max_usd":72000,"period":"year","method":"global_role_cell_scaled_by_country","sample_n":1760},"experience_years_min":5,"visa_sponsorship":true,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"AI Agents","optional":false},{"name":"Databricks","optional":false},{"name":"Slack","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-09-10T10:48:48Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-09-10","last_verified_at":"2026-10-20T20:55:38Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":40,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":40},"description":"OfferZen's client, Wonderful.ai is hiring for a Forward Deployed Engineer to join their growing team!\nWonderful.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. They enable enterprises to build, test, deploy, and monitor AI agents for their most complex needs, serving customers and employees seamlessly across voice, chat, email, and back-office systems in any language or cultural context.\nRole Overview\nAs a Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) at Wonderful, you’ll solve high-impact, real-world problems alongside enterprise customers and own work from first principles through production outcomes.\nYou’ll work directly with customers to understand critical workflows, design AI-driven solutions, and deploy agents that operate reliably in production. You’ll own projects end-to-end from problem definition and system design to launch and iteration - and be accountable for real business impact.\nThis is a hands on-generalist role for engineers who enjoy navigating ambiguity, learning quickly, and working across systems while partnering with enterprises as they become AI-driven organizations.\nWhat You’ll Do\nPartner with customers to understand operational challenges and success criteria\nTranslate open-ended problems into clear technical designs and implementations\nBuild AI agents that integrate with customer systems and perform real tasks\nOwn deployments, including reliability, performance, and continuous improvement\nTest with real data, measure outcomes, and iterate based on results\nCollaborate with Product & Engineering to ship high-quality solutions\nContribute to tools, documentation, and best practices that scale customer delivery\nWhat We’re Looking For\n5+ years of experience in software engineering or technical problem-solving roles\nStrong fundamentals in software design, system thinking\nExperience working across systems, integrations, and data flows\nComfort working directly with customers and owning ambiguous problems\nClear communication skills and a strong ownership mindset\nCuriosity and interest in building AI-powered systems that work in practice\nNice to Have\nExperience in forward-deployed, solutions engineering, or customer-facing roles\nExposure to AI agents, automation, or conversational systems\nExperience operating and improving production systems\nLogistics\nLocation: must be based in or willing to relocate to Johannesburg (office is in Rosebank)\nOffice attendance: ~4 days a week on-site, typically at a client's office, not Wonderful's own office\nCitizenship/visa: no strict requirement to be SA citizen, but no visa sponsorship available - candidate must already have the right to work in SA\nCompensation expectation: targeting 95th-99th percentile of local market rates - they’re willing to pay top of the range for talent, skill and experience\nPay structure: paid in ZAR, but employee can choose to anchor salary value to USD (converted at spot rate monthly) if they wish\nIf 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.","description_format":"text","description_chars":3267,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":5,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":[],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":true,"industries":["Recruiting & Staffing","Freelance & Talent Marketplaces"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-09-11T22:19:57Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":42,"band":"fade","label":"Fading","p_open":1,"p_active":0.772,"p_room":0.55,"age_days":39,"expected_fill_days":38,"reasons":["conf:2","win:tail"],"computed_at":"2026-10-20T05:45:00Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/offerzen-forward-deployed-engineer-fde","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/offerzen-forward-deployed-engineer-fde.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-20T21:41:29Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":25261,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-21T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":44290},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=44290"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fofferzen-forward-deployed-engineer-fde"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fofferzen-forward-deployed-engineer-fde"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fofferzen-forward-deployed-engineer-fde"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/offerzen-forward-deployed-engineer-fde\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fofferzen-forward-deployed-engineer-fde"}]}