Forward Deployed Engineer, EMEA
Job Description & Overview
About Exa
We raised a $250M Series C to build the search engine for AIs. Led by a16z, with existing investors Benchmark, Lightspeed, and YC doubling down, the round brings Exa's valuation to $2.2 billion.
Exa is building a search engine for the AI era. Our Search API currently powers Agents, Fortune 500s, and AI labs as we transform an industry that hasn't been disrupted since the 90s. We're a team of ~100 from Harvard, MIT, Meta, Google Research, ex-founders, and dropouts alike. We are rapidly building the most intelligent search engine in history. We're high agency, low-ego, and united by the feeling that this is one of the last problems worth getting right.
About the role
Forward Deployed Engineers are the technical tip of the spear at Exa. Partnered with an Account Executive, you own the technical win: you run discovery with customer engineering teams, design solutions on Exa's API, build and deliver demos and POCs that prove value, and turn technical evaluations into closed deals. You'll be one of the first GTM engineers in your region — you'll help define how Exa sells there, not just execute a playbook.
In this role, you will:
Own the technical side of the sales cycle: discovery, solution design, demos, POCs/POVs, and technical objection handling, in partnership with your AE
Run the technical side of expansion: spot new use cases in existing accounts and turn them into evaluations, with your AE
Build working demos and prototypes on Exa's API tailored to each customer's use case — agents, research, search, enrichment
Tell the story: translate Exa's capabilities into use-case narratives that land with CTOs, engineers, and PMs alike
Be the trusted technical advisor: know Exa inside out — the product, the API, the problems it solves — answer hard questions honestly, run evaluations rigorously, and know when to pull in engineering
Feed the field back into product: identify patterns across customer evaluations and channel them to product and engineering
Scale yourself and the region: build reusable demos, integration patterns, and playbooks, and represent Exa at technical workshops, meetups, and conferences
As a founding regional hire, support early customers through onboarding and initial implementation while we build out dedicated post-sales
Requirements
5+ years in a customer-facing technical role (flexible for exceptional candidates) — solutions/sales engineering, solutions architecture, or an engineering role with heavy customer exposure (e.g., engineering lead, developer relations, technical consulting)
Technical depth with APIs and modern development (e.g. Python or TypeScript): you can design an integration, build a working demo, and debug it live — using AI-assisted tooling is expected, hand-crafted code is not the bar
Strong communication and presentation skills: you can command a room, adapt to your audience, and say "I don't know — I'll