Forward-Deployed Engineer

We are looking for a Senior Forward-Deployed Engineer to join our Professional Services team. This role is focused on working directly alongside developer teams in 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 eve framework and AI SDK.

Our Forward-Deployed Engineers operate 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.

There are two main profiles for this role: Next.js experts, and AI builders. Next.js experts work on deep customer code optimization, performance audits, AEO and SEO, and teaching customers how to build Next.js apps with AI instrumentation - such as Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, etc with Next.js and Vercel agent skills. The AI builder profile is less focused on deep Next.js experience, and more on identifying, evangelizing, and building AI applications and agentic workflows. Your job in this role will be to understand customers’ businesses, scope, design, and build AI agents, and prove their value. The two profiles are not mutually exclusive and we appreciate expertise in both.

You will report to the Global Manager of Forward Deployed Engineering. This role is remote-first with travel to customer sites expected occasionally. Travel requirements vary, but most of our engineers travel no more than 3-4 days every other month.

• Build production AI solutions using Vercel's eve framework, AI SDK, and AI Cloud infrastructure, including conversational interfaces, production agents, MCP servers, and agentic workflows that transform customer operations.
• 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. Automation of migrations is key to engineering efficiency.
• Conduct code audits and help analyze and improve website performance, 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, and advanced rendering strategies to meet enterprise scale and performance requirements.
• Embed with strategic customers to build production applications - working within their systems, understanding their constraints, and shipping TypeScript 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.
• Contribute to our service evolution by identifying repeatable patterns, building reusable components, and sharing implementation insights back to Product and Engineering teams.