Forward-Deployed Engineer

About Vercel:

Vercel gives developers the tools and cloud infrastructure to build, scale, and secure a faster, more personalized web. As the team behind v0, Next.js, and AI SDK, Vercel helps customers like Ramp, Supreme, Pay Pal, and Under Armour build for the AI‑native web. Our mission is to enable the world to ship the best products. That starts with creating a place where everyone can do their best work.

Whether you’re building on our platform, supporting our customers, or shaping our story, you can just ship things.

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. In this role, you will lead complex Next.js migrations, architect high‑performance applications, and build production AI solutions—all within customer environments.

You’ll work hands‑on‑keyboard alongside customer teams, whether you’re migrating a legacy React application to App Router, conducting a deep‑dive code audit, or deploying production agents using Vercel’s AI SDK. You will be equally comfortable leading a technical discovery session with engineering leadership as you are refactoring a complex rendering strategy or optimizing an agentic workflow. Our Forward‑Deployed Engineer operates with high agency and autonomy.

You’ll navigate ambiguous enterprise environments, assess technical debt, design migration strategies, and deliver measurable business value—all while building long‑term relationships that expand our partnership with each customer. You will report to the Director of Professional Services and will be remote‑first with significant travel (25‑40%) to customer sites for embedded engagements.

• 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 Type Script 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.

• 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 Type Script skills—this is your primary language. You write production Type Script daily and have strong…