---
title: 'Forward-Deployed Engineer at Vercel'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/forward-deployed-engineer-vercel-london-33sxj5excb8e'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-05'
---

# Forward-Deployed Engineer at Vercel

- **Company:** Vercel
- **Location:** London, United Kingdom
- **Work type:** hybrid
- **Posted:** 2026-01-22
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-05
- **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/vercel/jobs/5778418004

## Job description

About Vercel:

Vercel is the agentic infrastructure company. We free people and agents to ship what’s next.

For more than a decade, Vercel has shaped how the web is built. As the team behind Next.js, v0, and AI SDK, we create products that help builders move from idea to production with speed, security, and exceptional developer experience.

Now, software is entering a new era, and the next generation of products will not just be used by people. They will be built, extended, and operated by agents.

We are building the platform for that future, trusted by companies like OpenAI, PayPal, Ramp, Supreme, and millions of developers worldwide. Whether you’re building our products, supporting our customers, growing our community, or shaping our story, you’ll help define what comes next.

About the role:

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.

What you will do:

- 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.

About you:

- 6+ years of experience in software engineering with at least 2 years in a customer-facing technical role (consulting, solutions architecture, forward deployed engineering, or technical founder experience).
- Experience using AI instrumentation such as harnesses, skills, and MCPs to build and deploy web applications, backend systems, and/or agentic workflows.
- High agency with comfort in ambiguity - you thrive when given a problem to solve rather than a task to complete, and you can navigate complex organizations to create a plan and drive a project.
- Exceptional communication skills with the ability to conduct technical discovery, present to executives, mentor engineers, and build lasting customer relationships - all with a low-ego, collaborative approach.
- Business acumen to understand customer objectives, translate technical capabilities into ROI, and identify expansion opportunities throughout engagement lifecycles.
- Willingness to travel occasionally to customer sites for embedded work and relationship building.

Next.js-focused Candidates:

- Expert-level TypeScript skills - You are fluent in TypeScript and have strong opinions on type safety, patterns, and tooling.
- Deep expertise in Next.js, with a proven track record of architecting and delivering complex applications using App Router, Server Components, server-side rendering (SSR), static generation (SSG), and incremental static regeneration (ISR), and personalization.
- Demonstrated experience leading frontend migrations - you've converted legacy applications to Next.js, navigated incremental adoption strategies, and understand the challenges of migrating large codebases in production environments.
- Mastery of React and its ecosystem, including advanced state management, performance optimization, and modern patterns like streaming, suspense, and concurrent features.

AI-focused Candidates:

- Production experience with LLMs and AI applications, including agent development, cloud sandbox & filesystem agent patterns, human-in-the-loop patterns, and value optimization. Familiarity with Vercel's eve framework and AI SDK is strongly preferred.
- Ability to identify business cases for AI agents - many customers need guidance not only on how to build AI agents, but where and why to use AI. You’ll need to listen and understand a day-in-the-life of customers’ teams to build proposals.

Bonus if you:

- Have led enterprise AI transformation initiatives, including building production agents that automated manual processes or replaced legacy systems.
- Have taught others how to develop software using AI, best practices for building agents, harnesses, skills, and MCPs.
- Have led large-scale migrations from legacy frameworks (Create React App, Gatsby, custom webpack setups) to Next.js in enterprise environments.
- Have expertise in performance optimization and Core Web Vitals, with experience diagnosing and fixing LCP, CLS, and INP issues at scale.
- Have contributed to the Next.js, React, or AI SDK open-source projects, or maintain popular related libraries.
- Have experience with enterprise deployment patterns including security reviews, compliance requirements, and multi-region architectures.
- Have a background in financial services, healthcare, retail/e-commerce, or media - industries with complex frontend ecosystems and growing AI adoption.
- Have spoken at conferences or published thought leadership on frontend architecture, migrations, or AI applications.

Benefits:

- Great compensation package and stock options.
- Inclusive Healthcare Package.
- Learn and Grow - we provide mentorship and send you to events that help you build your network and skills.
- Flexible Time Off - Flexible vacation policy with a recommended 4-weeks per year, and paid holidays.
- Remote Friendly - Work with teammates from different time zones across the globe.
- We will provide you the gear you need to do your role, and a WFH budget for you to outfit your space as needed.

## About Vercel

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Vercel provides cloud infrastructure, developer tools, and frameworks (including Next.js) for building and deploying websites and applications.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series F, September 2025)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, United States
- **Founded**: 2015 (as ZEIT; rebranded to Vercel in April 2020)
- **Founders**: Guillermo Rauch

## Core Business
- **Primary industries**: Edge computing, web hosting, content delivery network, developer tools
- **Target customers**: B2B – developers, engineering teams, enterprises, and startups building modern web applications
- **Mission / Purpose**: “Agentic infrastructure for every app and agent” — enabling humans and AI to build software together (from [vercel.com/about](https://vercel.com/about))

## Products & Services
- **Next.js**: Open-source React framework for building full-stack web applications (created and maintained by Vercel).
- **Vercel Edge Network**: Global edge infrastructure for serverless compute, static hosting, and dynamic rendering.
- **v0 (AI web development tool)**: Generates front-end code from natural language prompts; winner of a 2025 Webby Award.
- **AI SDK**: Open-source library for building conversational streaming interfaces in JavaScript/TypeScript.
- **Turborepo**: Monorepo build system (acquired in Dec 2021).
- **Fluid (infrastructure model)**: Allows instances to handle multiple concurrent requests like traditional servers while retaining serverless elasticity (introduced 2025).

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: $9.3 billion (Series F, September 2025)
- **Total Funding**: ~$652 million (Series C $102M in June 2021, $250M in May 2024 at $3.25B valuation, $300M Series F in Sep 2025)
- **Key Metric**: ~900 employees (as of 2026), growing from ~550 in 2025
- **Notable Investors & Partners**: Accel, GIC (co-led Series F); angel investors include Nat Friedman (former GitHub CEO), Jordan Walke (React creator), Naval Ravikant, and others (from [vercel.com/about](https://vercel.com/about))
- **Growth Signals**: Rapid valuation growth ($3.25B to $9.3B in ~16 months); acquisitions of NuxtLabs (Jul 2025), Tremor (Jan 2025), Splitbee (Oct 2022); appointment of Mitchell Hashimoto (HashiCorp co-founder) to board in Mar 2026.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Next.js ecosystem dominance**: Extensive adoption; Vercel controls the most popular React framework, creating a strong lock-in for deployment.
- **Composable architecture**: MACH Alliance member; supports Git-based workflows, serverless, and edge functions.
- **AI-native product suite**: v0 and AI SDK provide unique capabilities for developer productivity and conversational UI.
- **Fast innovation cycle**: Ship-fast culture backed by high funding and strong engineering talent.

## Strategic Focus
- **Agentic infrastructure**: Building the platform where both humans and AI agents build, deploy, and scale software.
- **AI integration**: Deepening capabilities of v0, AI SDK, and AI Gateway; automated infrastructure improvements.
- **Enterprise adoption**: Appointing board members with enterprise experience; expanding sales and partner roles.
- **Fluid model**: Evolving serverless to handle stateful, long-running workloads.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Engineer-driven, ship-fast ethos; 75% of Glassdoor reviewers recommend to a friend; overall rating 4.1/5.0 as of 2026 ([jobsbyculture.com](https://jobsbyculture.com/blog/working-at-vercel-2026))
- **Work model**: Remote-first (U.S. roles also in San Francisco, New York City, Austin); distributed across 54% U.S., 8% U.K., 5% Germany, etc. ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/vercel))
- **Compensation**: Typical engineering range $180k–$320k (senior roles); benefits and equity are competitive (from [jobsbyculture.com](https://jobsbyculture.com/blog/working-at-vercel-2026))
- **Engineering quality**: High bar for talent; known alumni go to top AI/cloud companies; strong open-source contributions (Next.js, Turborepo, AI SDK)
- **Recent departures do not diminish growth**: Despite some leadership changes (e.g., Head of Mobile left Mar 2026, Director of Commercial Sales left Apr 2026), the company continues to hire heavily (94 active postings as of mid-2026, +2.2% YoY) ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/vercel))

## Sources
1. [wikipedia.org](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vercel)
2. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/vercel)
3. [vercel.com/about](https://vercel.com/about)
4. [vercel.com/careers](https://vercel.com/careers)
5. [jobsbyculture.com](https://jobsbyculture.com/blog/working-at-vercel-2026)

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