---
title: 'Forward Deployed Engineer at Speakeasy'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/forward-deployed-engineer-speakeasy-san-francisco-f9sx93b4cm6z'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-09'
---

# Forward Deployed Engineer at Speakeasy

- **Company:** Speakeasy
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-03-05
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-09
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/speakeasy/def210b2-b6aa-421b-84c4-dcd278f95db9

## Job description

## ABOUT SPEAKEASY

AI is moving from chat interfaces to operational systems.

Across enterprises, AI agents are connecting to internal systems, using APIs, accessing data, and taking actions on behalf of employees. But while AI adoption is accelerating, governance, visibility, and control have not kept pace.

Speakeasy is building the Enterprise AI Control Plane.

We help organizations securely connect AI systems to their APIs, tools, and internal infrastructure while providing the identity, governance, permissions, auditability, and observability required to operate AI at scale.

Our customers include companies like Mistral, Verizon, Cisco, Vercel, Redis, Glean, LaunchDarkly, PlanetScale, and Docusign. We are backed by Google Ventures, FPV, and Quiet Capital. Today, hundreds of companies rely on Speakeasy infrastructure across API platforms, MCP deployments, and enterprise AI systems.

We’re a highly technical team based across San Francisco and London, building at the intersection of AI, infrastructure, security, developer platforms, and enterprise software.

## THE ROLE

Forward Deployed Engineers sit at the center of our customers, product, and engineering teams.

You will work directly with engineering leaders, platform teams, security teams, and AI initiatives at some of the most sophisticated companies deploying AI today.

This is not a traditional solutions engineering role. You’ll operate across pre-sales, deployment, product feedback, and engineering, acting as the technical bridge between our customers and our platform.

You will partner closely with customers from initial evaluation through production deployment. You’ll lead technical discovery, design integrations, solve architecture challenges, build proofs-of-concept, influence product direction, and help define how enterprises securely adopt AI agents and MCP infrastructure.

One week you may be helping a customer connect internal APIs to AI systems. The next week you may be designing access control models, debugging identity flows, implementing MCP governance, or working with our product team on entirely new capabilities driven by customer feedback.

You will often be the technical face of Speakeasy and one of the first people customers trust with mission-critical AI initiatives.

## WHAT YOU’LL DO

## DRIVE TECHNICAL SALES

- Partner with Account Executives on strategic customer opportunities
- Lead technical discovery and architecture conversations with prospective customers
- Design and deliver demos, proofs-of-concept, and pilot implementations
- Help customers evaluate how Speakeasy fits into their AI, security, and infrastructure strategy
- Translate customer requirements into deployment plans and product feedback
- Serve as the technical owner for complex opportunities from evaluation through production rollout

## DEPLOY AND INTEGRATE

- Lead customer implementations of the Speakeasy AI Control Plane
- Design integrations with APIs, MCP servers, SaaS platforms, identity providers, and internal systems
- Build prototypes, proofs-of-concept, and deployment architectures
- Troubleshoot complex technical issues across customer environments

## PARTNER WITH CUSTOMERS

- Act as a trusted technical advisor to engineering, platform, security, and AI teams
- Translate customer requirements into technical solutions
- Guide customers through architecture decisions and implementation tradeoffs
- Drive successful production rollouts and long-term adoption
- Build strong relationships with engineering leaders, platform teams, security teams, and AI stakeholders

## SHAPE THE PRODUCT

- Identify patterns across customer deployments
- Influence product roadmap and prioritization
- Work directly with engineering to improve platform capabilities
- Create reusable deployment patterns, documentation, and best practices

## BUILD

- Write production-quality code when needed
- Build internal tooling and deployment accelerators
- Create reference implementations and demos
- Prototype new product ideas alongside customers

## WHO YOU ARE

Successful candidates often come from backgrounds such as:

- Founding Engineer
- Forward Deployed Engineer
- Solutions Engineer
- Platform Engineer
- Infrastructure Engineer
- Technical Founder

You are comfortable moving between code, architecture discussions, customer conversations, and product strategy.

WE ARE PARTICULARLY EXCITED IF YOU:

- Have 5+ years of software engineering experience
- Have built or deployed APIs, developer platforms, infrastructure products, or security systems
- Have experience working directly with customers in technical environments
- Can quickly understand unfamiliar systems and navigate ambiguity
- Enjoy solving open-ended problems with incomplete information
- Have strong communication skills and can explain complex technical concepts clearly
- Care deeply about customer outcomes

## BONUS POINTS

- AI agent, MCP, or LLM application experience
- Identity and access management experience
- Security, governance, or compliance background
- Experience with enterprise software deployments
- Startup or founding-team experience

## WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE

Within your first 6 months, you will:

- Become a trusted technical advisor to both prospective and existing customers
- Independently lead technical evaluations, pilots, and enterprise deployments
- Help customers securely deploy AI agents, MCP servers, and internal tools at scale
- Identify product gaps and influence the roadmap through direct customer engagement
- Establish best practices for enterprise AI governance and agent infrastructure
- Drive meaningful customer outcomes that directly impact company growth and adoption

## WHY SPEAKEASY

We’re building infrastructure for one of the most important transitions happening in software.

As AI systems evolve from chat interfaces into operational agents, every company will need governance, visibility, identity, and control over how those systems interact with the world.

We believe the Enterprise AI Control Plane becomes a foundational layer of modern infrastructure.

Joining now means helping define that category from the beginning.

## COMPENSATION & BENEFITS

- $180,000-$230,000 base salary + meaningful equity
- Medical, dental, and vision coverage
- 401(k)
- Flexible PTO
- Regular company offsites
- Offices in San Francisco and London
- Small team, high ownership, significant impact

## About Speakeasy

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Speakeasy provides an enterprise AI control plane to connect, secure, and govern AI agents, MCP servers, skills, and assistants with fine-grained permissions, threat detection, and full observability.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series A)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, United States
- **Founded**: 2022
- **Founders**: Sagar Batchu (CEO) and Simon Yu (COO)

## Core Business
- Primary industry/industries: AI infrastructure, enterprise security, API integration
- Target customers: B2B / Enterprise (security, compliance, and platform engineering teams)
- Mission or purpose statement: "Making API integration simple, fast, and reliable" – evolved into "The enterprise control plane for AI."

## Products & Services
- **Speakeasy AI Control Plane**: A SaaS platform that centrally manages MCP (Model Context Protocol) servers, skills, and AI assistants. Includes role-based access control, OAuth 2.1 with DCR/PKCE, automated provisioning, audit trails, real-time threat detection (prompt injection, PII leakage, shadow AI tool discovery), and observability dashboards. Supports self-hosted data plane deployment in customer VPC. SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 certified.
- **API Integration Tools (historical)**: SDK generation, Terraform providers, and MCP server creation from OpenAPI specs (still part of the platform).

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed
- **Key Metric**: Total Funding – $25.9M (Pre-Seed $3.3M led by Quiet Capital; Seed $7.6M led by Google Ventures; Series A $15M led by FPV Ventures in October 2024)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Quiet Capital, Google Ventures, FPV Ventures; also partnered with companies like Fivetran (case study on site)
- **Growth Signals**: Series A raised in late 2024; headcount of ~30 with +2.3% monthly growth; active job postings (6 roles as of July 2025); LinkedIn follower growth of +38.4% YoY; expanding team across US, UK, Australia, Vietnam.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Unified control plane**: Single layer to manage all AI agents and MCP servers across Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, and custom agents.
- **Enterprise-ready security**: Built-in OAuth 2.1 identity integration (Okta, Entra ID, SAML/OIDC), fine-grained RBAC at server/tool level, real-time threat detection, and full audit trails. SOC 2 and ISO 27001 certified.
- **Self-hosted data plane**: Allows enterprises to keep data resident in their own VPC while using Speakeasy's management plane.
- **Automated provisioning**: Role-based access automatically syncs from existing SSO, reducing manual setup.

## Strategic Focus
- **Current priorities**: Scaling the AI control plane to handle multi-agent enterprise environments; deepening integrations with identity providers and SIEM tools; expanding MCP server catalog and skills marketplace; driving adoption of governance features to prevent data leakage and shadow AI.
- **Direction for growth**: Positioning as the essential infrastructure layer for enterprise AI deployment, with emphasis on compliance, security, and observability.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture highlights**: Mission-driven engineering culture focused on solving hard API and AI infrastructure problems. Flat team structure with numerous founding engineers. Emphasis on shipping fast and reliable tools.
- **Remote/hybrid/office**: Flexible work arrangements ("Flexible work arrangements" listed in benefits). Office presence in San Francisco. Team distributed across US, UK, Australia, and Vietnam.
- **Notable perks/engineering culture**: Competitive salary and equity; health, dental, and vision insurance; unlimited PTO; learning and development budget; home office setup stipend. Engineering-led company with strong developer relations and forward-deployed engineering roles.

## Sources
1. [speakeasy.com](https://www.speakeasy.com/) – Product description, mission, features, certifications, case studies
2. [speakeasy.com/careers](https://www.speakeasy.com/careers) – Team listing, open positions, benefits
3. [speakeasy.com/company](https://www.speakeasy.com/company) – Team page, mission, values
4. [linkedin.com/company/speakeasyapi](https://www.linkedin.com/company/speakeasyapi) – Funding rounds, employee count, headquarters, revenue estimate, key executives

## Other roles at Speakeasy

- [Platform Engineer (SRE) - AI Control Plane](https://feeny.ai/job/platform-engineer-sre-ai-control-plane-speakeasy-san-francisco-vbjthxs0ybjr) — San Francisco, CA
- [Product Engineer - AI Control Plane](https://feeny.ai/job/product-engineer-ai-control-plane-speakeasy-san-francisco-d8d8bqcx7gbr) — San Francisco, CA
- [Product Engineer (Security) - AI Control Plane](https://feeny.ai/job/product-engineer-security-ai-control-plane-speakeasy-san-francisco-gfmxsac7qztf) — San Francisco, CA
- [Account Executive](https://feeny.ai/job/account-executive-speakeasy-san-francisco-8mwpa4ks28fc) — 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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