# Forward Deployed Engineer - Company: [Rime]() - Location: San Francisco Bay Area - Team: Revenue - Employment type: Full Time - Posted: May 12, 2026 ## Job description ## **Forward Deployed Engineer** **Location:** San Francisco **Reports To:** Head of Forward Deployed Engineering **OTE**: $185,000 - $235,000 ## **About Us** Rime builds voice AI for enterprises running customer experiences at scale. Our text-to-speech models are purpose-built for high-volume conversational deployments, engineered for the pronunciation accuracy, latency, and deployment flexibility that production environments actually demand. We started from a different premise than the rest of the field: voice AI isn't bottlenecked by model architecture. It's bottlenecked by data. So before we trained a single model, we built our own corpus: full-duplex, studio-quality conversational speech, recorded and annotated by PhD linguists. That's our moat. It's also why enterprises pick Rime when pilots need to convert into production. We're backed by top-tier investors including Unusual Ventures, and we've built a team at the intersection of product, research, and craft. Building voice models is an art. We intend to master it. ## **The Role** We’re looking for a Forward Deployed Engineer to operate at the intersection of sales, product, and engineering - helping enterprise customers bring frontier voice AI into production. This is not a traditional solutions engineer role. You’ll work directly with customers and internal teams to design prototypes, build integrations, solve technical blockers, and deploy production-ready systems in live environments. You’ll own technical execution across the customer lifecycle: from early technical discovery and POCs to implementation and expansion. The work is highly hands-on and fast-moving. The best candidates are strong builders who enjoy working directly with customers and thrive in ambiguous environments. ## **What You’ll Do** * **Be a technical closer.** You're in the room for every strategic deal - not to present slides, but to build what it takes to win. * **Deploy frontier models into production.** Get your hands dirty with real integrations, real infrastructure, and real customer environments at some of the largest companies in the world. * **Own the POC end-to-end.** Design, build, and ship production-quality proof-of-concepts - frontend, backend, integrations - fast. * **Own the customer relationship technically**. Manage technical stakeholders from first demo through go-live and expansion. Pre-sales and post-sales are yours. * **Turn what you build into product.** Patterns you identify across deals go upstream - you're a direct input to the roadmap. ## **Who You Are** * **A builder who wants to be customer-facing.** You're most comfortable when you're writing code and in the room with the customer - not choosing between the two. * **Full-stack capable.** You can ship clean, production-quality systems quickly and aren't precious about the stack. * **Deeply comfortable with APIs, SDKs, and cloud infrastructure** in live customer environments. * **Energized by ambiguity.** You thrive when requirements are half-formed, the timeline is short, and the stakes are high. * **A sharp communicator** who goes deep with engineers and clearly frames business value for executives. * **Done waiting on the sidelines.** You want ownership, impact, and a seat at the table. ### **Nice to Have** * Experience with voice AI, TTS, speech, or real-time systems * Background working with ISVs, platforms, or developer ecosystems * Familiarity with WebRTC, streaming, or low-latency systems ## **Why Join Rime** * Rime is an AI lab - you're working alongside the researchers and engineers building frontier voice ai models. * Direct exposure to how frontier AI gets built and deployed at scale, across some of the most demanding industries in the world. * Competitive compensation with meaningful equity and real performance upside — we want to build a small, high-performing team that has real ownership. ## At Rime, we... * Are outliers * Cut through the hype to focus on the craft * Move fast with agency and freedom * Maintain a growth mindset, finding joy in the struggle * Do the right things, knowing that it'll lead to making money If that sounds like you too, you'll be a great fit for Rime! ## Apply [Apply on Rime]() Canonical job page: