Deployed Engineer
Position Overview
A Deployed Engineer at Span is an engineer who works directly with the customer to ensure that our product is successfully implemented and delivering value. You will be responsible for key parts of our pre-sales process and follow customers through their early post-sales journey until they succeed with our product. Achieving success requires communication, customer listening, problem-solving, and technical skills to ultimately deliver customer impact – either by leveraging what we have or building what we are missing. This role is ideal for former technical founders because, in essence, that fanatical devotion to making every customer feel like they are at the center of our roadmap that every startup offers in its early days is what you will help us scale up.
Core Responsibilities
You will be paired with an AE on every deal, but they will be responsible for customer rapport, enterprise deal mechanics, and negotiation. At the same time, you will focus on a complementary set of responsibilities.
On the pre-sales relationship side, you will:
Demo our product and answer key technical questions
Answer security and compliance questions
Continually refine our understanding of the customer’s success criteria and pain points
Implement prospects onto Span by helping them with integration setup
Attend periodic check-in meetings throughout the POC phase
Act as technical support during the POC
Assist with training and enablement of POC users (usually VPEs and Directors)
Aside from the above relationship-focused responsibilities, you will own end-to-end execution of the following product/engineering responsibilities:
Do user research (usually during onboarding calls) to discover potential product and/or product marketing improvements.
Identify basic requirements and work with our designer to create conceptual mocks if commitment engineering is required for success.
Directly build and/or work in a small team to build features necessary for the customer to realize their success criteria. This may extend into post-sales, depending on complexity.
Delight prospects by demonstrating extreme agility in addressing minor quality of life or bugfix feedback.
Work on automation and internal tools that improve the likelihood of presales success.
Work closely with the GTM team to shape our product marketing and positioning.
Work closely with the founders on product strategy, acting as a voice of the customer.
If we are wildly successful building funnel, you will be in upwards of ~2 hours of meetings a day spent on sales-like activities with customers (demos, kickoff calls, etc.), but you should be prepared to spend more time with customers as needed in fulfilling your product/engineering responsibilities.
Example Projects
Most of the features we have in Span were built through a commitment engineering approach with design partners. More extensive examples (delivered in ~4-6 weeks) include our R&D Cost Capitalization report, Pulse Surveying capabilities, and Microsoft Calendar integration. Smaller examples include new metrics, report filters, and working norms. We don’t expect you to build every feature on your own, of course, but where it needs to be a team effort due to domain expertise or bandwidth contention, you will at least act as a PM or lead.
You will also work on tools that help improve the efficacy of your role, including internal console workflows and admin scripts. For example, you might build a tool that lets GTM teammates send Slack messages impersonating one of the founders (in an approval queue).
Lastly, given your skillset and proximity to the customer, we expect you to play a strategic role in shaping our presales process and product strategy. We are looking to tap your founder experience and resourcefulness to get us to the next level of growth through whatever means necessary. This means that Job Description aside, you should also be prepared to wear other hats if necessary.
Final Thoughts
The failure mode is that this role will require you to do a ton of context switching (including juggling customer calls and handling support over Slack) while still being expected to deliver non-trivial engineering work. Our guess is that you’ve done similar context switching in the past as a founder, manager, or staff IC. Only you can say if you’re ready to do it again.
However, if you crave an engineering role tied to impact, this is it. If a customer closes, it’s because you played a significant role. You will do product and engineering work based on your own convictions culled from direct conversations with CTOs and VPEs. And, with each project, if you succeed, you’ll have meaningfully improved our future product leverage while securing a happy, fully enabled customer that will happily renew for years to come.
Average salary estimate
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Join us at Span as a Deployed Engineer based in the vibrant city of San Francisco! In this role, you’ll play a pivotal part in ensuring our customers enjoy seamless interaction with our product, from pre-sales demos to successful implementation and training. It’s more than just a job; it’s about making every customer feel valued and heard, like during those early startup days when every detail matters. You’ll team up with an Account Executive to charm clients while you take charge of technical inquiries, setup, and ongoing support. Your knack for problem-solving and technical prowess will be essential as you dive deep into understanding client needs, conducting user research to inform product improvements, and even building features that directly address their criteria for success. Expect a mix of meetings, hands-on engineering, and strategic input—all fostering customer success and satisfaction. It’s a dynamic role ideal for those who thrive on juggling responsibilities, relishing in the impact they create with each customer encounter. If you’re passionate about engineering with a purpose, this is your chance to shine at Span!
SPAN is a startup that operates in the energy sector, founded by Arch Rao in 2018. We offer innovative solutions and develops products to enable the rapid adoption of renewable energy and deliver an intuitive interface for the home.
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