Forward Deployed Engineer

About the Team

The Customer Engineering and Architecture (CEA) team at WordPress VIP works directly with our most important customers to ensure they achieve their core technical outcomes and expand their investment in WordPress, VIP, and Automattic.

The team’s mission is to drive measurable technical success and long-term growth for VIP’s largest customers through a hands-on, scalable Forward Deployed Engineering practice that combines deep technical partnership with rapid, high-impact solutioning.

Role Overview

As a Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE), you will serve as an embedded technical partner to one or more complex WordPress VIP customers in Media, Enterprise, and Government.

You’ll work at the intersection of engineering, consulting, and customer success—diving deep into customer architectures, identifying and resolving complex technical challenges, and shaping scalable solutions that drive long-term adoption and expansion.

This is not a pure support or implementation role. It’s an advanced, consultative engineering position where you’ll operate as a hands-on architect, a trusted advisor, and a growth catalyst, helping customers succeed with WordPress VIP and related open-source technologies.

What You’ll Do

Deliver Customer Technical Outcomes

• Engage directly with large VIP customers (often embedded in their teams) to ensure successful adoption, integration, and scaling of WordPress VIP solutions.
• Directly identify and solve complex architectural and technical problems.
• Partner with customers as they leverage VIP’s support capabilities, ensuring they fully utilize VIP's high-availability support.
• Conduct technical discovery and design sessions, producing architecture recommendations, migration plans, and implementation guidance.
• Maximize the customer’s value from VIP’s platform, integrations, and partner ecosystem.

Drive Expansion Through Services-Led Growth

• Identify and shape professional services opportunities through ongoing technical engagement. Document and refer engagements to other VIP PS teams.
• Define scopes of work (SOWs) for technical expansion projects, collaborating closely with Services, Account Management, and Commercial teams.
• Participate in presales and renewal discussions as the technical voice of confidence and credibility.

Hold and Share Deep Customer Context

• Maintain a living technical knowledge base of customer architectures, deployments, and patterns.
• Act as the internal authority on assigned customer environments, proactively identifying risks and opportunities.
• Contribute to team-wide tooling and