---
title: 'Forward Deployed Engineer at Emergence Capital Partners'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/forward-deployed-engineer-emergence-capital-partners-san-francisco-2jm0tdsyqwdk'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-11'
---

# Forward Deployed Engineer at Emergence Capital Partners

- **Company:** Emergence Capital Partners
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Posted:** 2025-12-22
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-11
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/emergence-capital-partners/c0f9e643-ca0e-4891-b101-defb210f0f61

## Job description

## About the Role

You'll work directly with our largest customers to solve their most critical problems – then ship the solutions yourself. This is a technical role with significant customer exposure, sitting at the intersection of engineering, product, and customer success. Forward Deployed Engineers are the bridge between what customers need and what the product can do. You'll spend time on-site or deeply embedded with customers, understanding their workflows, pain points, and requirements. Then you'll come back and build, shipping features, integrations, and customizations that unlock value. The best FDEs develop deep domain expertise and become trusted advisors to customers. This role is ideal for engineers who want customer exposure, founders whose companies didn't work out but want to stay close to the market, or anyone who believes great products come from deep customer understanding. You'll have more context on customer needs than almost anyone in the company, and you'll use that context to shape what we build.

## What You'll Do

- Partner with enterprise customers to understand requirements, scope projects, and expand into new use cases
- Build and ship features, integrations, and customizations that solve specific customer problems (you will probably write code for customer-specific integrations, proof of concepts, and implementations).
- Own the full cycle from customer problem identification through technical solution to production deployment
- Develop deep domain expertise in customer workflows, troubleshoot issues in customer environments, and become a trusted technical advisor
- Translate customer feedback and requirements into product roadmap inputs and feature requests
- Collaborate with sales and core engineering to help prioritize what matters most to revenue, improve workflows and systems, and ship larger product initiatives informed by customer needs
- Create technical documentation, training materials, and implementation guides for customers
- Support customer onboarding and ensure successful adoption of new features

## Qualifications

- 4+ years of software engineering experience with strong coding skills in Python, TypeScript, or similar
- Experience in a customer-facing technical GTM role: FDE, solutions engineer, technical consultant, or similar
- Ability to context-switch between building and selling, comfortable in both writing production-quality code and customer meetings
- Strong communication skills with ability to explain technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders
- Experience with enterprise software, integrations, or building on top of existing customer systems
- Comfort with ambiguity and ability to scope and execute projects with minimal direction
- Track record of shipping production code and delivering measurable customer outcomes
- Willingness to travel for customer engagements (typically 20-40%)

## Nice to Have

- Previous experience as an FDE at Palantir, solutions engineer at Scale AI, or similar customer-facing technical GTM role
- Background as a technical founder or early startup engineer
- Domain expertise in financial services, legal, healthcare, or other enterprise SaaS verticals
- Experience with AI/ML systems, data pipelines, or analytics infrastructure
- Consulting background with technical implementation experience
- Experience at a company selling into enterprise customers with complex requirements

## About Emergence Capital Partners

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Emergence Capital is a venture capital firm that partners with early-stage enterprise SaaS founders to build iconic cloud companies.
- **Entity Type**: Private (venture capital firm)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, USA
- **Founded**: 2003
- **Founders**: Jason Green, Brian Jacobs, Gordon Ritter

## Core Business
- Primary industry: Venture Capital (early-stage enterprise SaaS investment)
- Target customers: B2B enterprise technology startups (founders and management teams)
- Mission or purpose statement: “To help build the next generation of enterprise cloud companies that change the way the world works.” [emcap.com](https://www.emcap.com/thoughts/hiring-for-our-values)

## Products & Services
- **Venture Capital Funding**: Provides early-stage (Series A/B) capital to enterprise SaaS companies; typically invests in 5–7 new companies per year with a high-touch, low-volume approach. [emcap.com](https://www.emcap.com/)
- **Portfolio Support Services**: Offers go-to-market expertise, talent sourcing (via a dedicated job board), and strategic advice through the full company lifecycle. [emcap.com/about](https://www.emcap.com/about)
- **AI-Native Services (AINS) Playbook**: A framework and expertise for investing in “companies that sell outcomes rather than software” – a focus area as AI unlocks new business models. [emcap.com](https://www.emcap.com/)

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly available (VC firm valuation is not disclosed).
- **Key Metrics**: Over $9B in realized returns on less than $2.5B invested. Over 90% of early-stage investments successfully raised follow-on rounds and over 20% later surpassed $1B in valuation. [emcap.com](https://www.emcap.com/)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Founders/Partners include Gordon Ritter, Santi Subotovsky, Jake Saper, Kevin Spain, Yaz El-Baba, and others; the firm has zero partner turnover since founding. [emcap.com/team](https://www.emcap.com/team)
- **Growth Signals**: Raised sixth core fund (ECP VI) and Opportunity Fund I; crossed 100th investment; portfolio includes public companies like Zoom, Doximity, Blend, and notable acquisitions like Chorus and Openpath. [emcap.com](https://www.emcap.com/thoughts/hiring-for-our-values)

## Competitive Advantages
- **Hyper-focused thesis**: Concentrates exclusively on early-stage enterprise SaaS, allowing deep domain expertise and conviction.
- **Long-term, low-turnover partnership**: No partner has ever left the firm, providing consistent mentorship and support across company lifecycles.
- **Exceptional track record**: 1 in 10 early-stage investments have gone public, and 1 in 5 have reached unicorn status.
- **High-touch approach**: Partners make only one investment per year each, enabling deep diligence and hands-on founder support.

## Strategic Focus
- **Leading the AI transformation**: Actively investing in AI infrastructure, physical world AI, and AI-Native Services (AINS) as the next wave of enterprise business models.
- **Staying early and focused**: Maintaining a disciplined, thesis-driven investment strategy while scaling support for portfolio companies.
- **Expanding talent and resources**: Growing the internal team to sustain high-touch partnership and adding new capabilities (e.g., dedicated operating partners).

## Why Work Here
- **Culture of collaboration and long-term thinking**: The firm values “unanimous enthusiasm” on investments and emphasizes integrity, humility, and fairness.
- **Low turnover & internal growth**: Team members are developed into partner roles from within; no GP ever departs.
- **Impact on iconic companies**: Employees contribute to shaping the future of enterprise cloud alongside firms like Zoom, Salesforce, Veeva, and Gusto.
- **Work location**: Likely hybrid/office in San Francisco (not explicitly confirmed). [emcap.com/careers](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/emergence-capital-partners)

## Sources
1. [Emergence Capital Website](https://www.emcap.com/)
2. [About Emergence Capital](https://www.emcap.com/about)
3. [Team Page](https://www.emcap.com/team)
4. [Hiring For Our Values Blog Post](https://www.emcap.com/thoughts/hiring-for-our-values)
5. [Emergence Capital Job Board](https://talent.emcap.com/jobs)

## Other roles at Emergence Capital Partners

- [Stay on our Radar](https://feeny.ai/job/stay-on-our-radar-emergence-capital-partners-san-francisco-nb6nwede590s) — San Francisco, CA
- [Business Operations / Chief of Staff](https://feeny.ai/job/business-operations-chief-of-staff-emergence-capital-partners-san-francisco-qfngxhdbjzzk) — San Francisco, CA
- [Founding GTM Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/founding-gtm-lead-emergence-capital-partners-san-francisco-81dnjeb3n441) — San Francisco, CA
- [Staff Software Engineer, Applied AI](https://feeny.ai/job/staff-software-engineer-applied-ai-emergence-capital-partners-san-francisco-cv3xt15gh6c2) — San Francisco, CA
- [Founding Designer](https://feeny.ai/job/founding-designer-emergence-capital-partners-san-francisco-9vams4b8es74) — San Francisco, CA
- [Forward Deployed Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/forward-deployed-engineer-wispr-flow-san-francisco-pgja820f57tt) — San Francisco, CA
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