Forward Deployed Engineer

About Us

Tavus is a research lab pioneering human computing, building AI Humans—a new interface that closes the gap between people and machines. Our real-time human simulation models enable machines to see, hear, respond, and look real, facilitating meaningful, face-to-face conversations. AI Humans combine human emotional intelligence with machine reach and reliability, acting as capable, trusted agents available 24/7 in every language.

We envision a future where individuals, enterprises, and developers can build AI Humans for empathetic connection, understanding, and action at scale. Tavus is a Series B company backed by world-class investors including Sequoia Capital, Y Combinator, and Scale Venture Partners.

The Role

This isn’t a traditional engineering job. As a Forward Deployed Engineer, you’ll split your time between two worlds:

• With customers (30–40%) — working hands-on to debug integrations, unblock adoption, and help them build amazing things with Tavus.
• With our product (the rest of the time) — building SDKs, prototypes, and enhancements to our core platform that make Tavus more powerful, intuitive, and delightful to use.

You’ll be the bridge between customers and engineering, turning real-world challenges into product improvements. Your mission is simple: ensure every developer and creator has a smooth, magical experience with Tavus — backed by great docs, guides, tools, and product enhancements.

Core Responsibilities

• Work directly with customers to debug, build POCs, and design solutions.
• Build prototypes, SDKs, sample apps, and tools that improve developer experience.
• Collect feedback, identify patterns, and translate them into product/engineering improvements.
• Partner on early feature adoption: test pre-release features with customers, gather feedback, suggest iterations.
• Help define how we develop a world class customer experience.

What Makes You a Great Fit

• Extremely solid software engineering fundamentals.
• Deep curiosity about problems at every level of the stack, from ML to infrastructure to networking.
• The desire to work closely with end users to understand their problems.
• A good “PM hat” to see patterns in customer requests and use those patterns to inform product direction.
• A strong bias toward action and a founder mindset to keep going until a problem is truly solved.

Why This Role Matters

Success in this role means:

• Customers integrate Tavus faster and more reliably because of your support.
• Engineering ships changes directly informed by your field learnings.
• Prototypes and tools you build demonstrate new use cases and accelerate adoption.
• Product priorities are influenced by the patterns you uncover across customers.
• The challenge is providing world class customer experience as Tavus grows, while still feeling the customer’s pain and turning it into fast product improvements.