Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) at Automattic

Introduction to WordPress VIP and Automattic

At WordPress VIP, a part of Automattic, we empower the most influential digital properties globally, serving clients from government entities to major tech companies like Meta and Salesforce. We are actively seeking a Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) to join our mission, aiming to redefine how the world's largest enterprises scale their digital presence. This unique position goes beyond typical engineering; it is an advanced, consultative role where you will act as a hands-on architect and a catalyst for growth. As an FDE, you build trust on the front lines, working directly with our most strategic customers to resolve high-stakes technical challenges in real-time. By blending engineering expertise with close customer collaboration, you will not just solve problems for customers, but with them, driving business expansion in highly scaled environments. If you thrive in dynamic, high-impact settings and are eager to shape the future of open-source technology at the enterprise level, we encourage you to apply.

About the Team

The Customer Engineering and Architecture (CEA) team at WordPress VIP collaborates directly with our key customers, ensuring they achieve their technical objectives and expand their use of WordPress, VIP, and Automattic solutions. The team's goal is to achieve measurable technical success and foster long-term growth for VIP's largest customers through a practical, scalable Forward Deployed Engineering approach that combines deep technical partnership with rapid, high-impact solution delivery.

Role Overview

As a Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE), you will serve as an embedded technical partner for one or more complex WordPress VIP customers across Media, Enterprise, and Government sectors. This role sits at the intersection of engineering, consulting, and customer success, involving deep dives into customer architectures, identifying and resolving complex technical issues, and designing scalable solutions that promote long-term adoption and expansion. This is not a standard support or implementation role; it is an advanced, consultative engineering position where you will function 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 within their teams, to ensure successful adoption, integration, and scaling of WordPress VIP solutions.
• Proactively identify and resolve complex architectural and technical problems.
• Collaborate with customers to ensure they fully leverage VIP's high-availability support capabilities.
• Conduct technical discovery and design sessions, providing 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 develop professional services opportunities through continuous technical engagement. Document and refer engagements to other VIP Professional Services teams.
• Define Statements of Work (SOWs) for technical expansion projects, working closely with Services, Account Management, and Commercial teams.
• Participate in presales and renewal discussions, acting as a technical expert to build confidence and credibility.

Hold and Share Deep Customer Context

• Maintain a current technical knowledge base of customer architectures, deployments, and patterns.
• Serve as the internal authority on assigned customer environments, proactively identifying risks and opportunities.
• Contribute to team-wide tooling and process enhancements, including delivery platforms, AI workflows, and documentation systems (e.g., Rocketlane, Notion, or similar).

Contribute to the Forward Deployed Engineering Practice

• Utilize data to refine the operating model for FDE engagements, balancing presence, value, and scalability.
• Experiment with and adopt AI-assisted workflows to enhance delivery efficiency and insight generation.
• Collaborate with leadership to expand the practice into a repeatable, revenue-generating function.

Qualifications

Required

• 5+ years of hands-on experience in web or application engineering, with proficiency in PHP and/or JavaScript.
• Strong familiarity with WordPress at scale, including common architectures, REST APIs, caching/CDNs, performance optimization, integration methods, and security hardening.
• Experience working directly with large customers in technical consulting, architecture, or professional services.
• Proven ability to diagnose and resolve complex technical issues in distributed or high-traffic environments.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills, comfortable in both debugging sessions and executive briefings.
• Commercial mindset, capable of identifying opportunities for value expansion and articulating ROI to non-technical stakeholders.

Ideal

• Experience with WordPress VIP, enterprise hosting, or similar SaaS/PaaS platforms.
• Prior experience as a solutions architect, senior developer, or forward deployed engineer in a consulting or SaaS/PaaS context.
• Familiarity with AI-assisted development, observability tools, and modern DevOps practices (CI/CD, GitHub Actions, etc.).
• Domain experience in Government, Media, or Enterprise.

Key Competencies

• Technical Depth & Breadth: Rapidly understand diverse architectures and technologies.
• Customer Empathy: Translate customer needs into actionable technical and business outcomes.
• Problem Ownership: Take responsibility for technical success, even beyond formal scope.
• Commercial Awareness: Balance engineering rigor with business objectives.
• Learning Agility: Continuously adapt to new tools, patterns, and customer contexts.
• Collaboration: Work fluidly with Services, Support, Product, and Commercial teams to deliver holistic outcomes.

Compensation and Benefits

The salary range for this position is $180,000-$230,000 USD. Please note that salary ranges are global and paid in local currency, regardless of location. We seek high-caliber candidates who will bring a net positive impact to Automattic, and pay will reflect potential contribution. Automattic is a fully remote company with an open vacation policy, meaning Unlimited PTO. For a full list of benefits by country, please consult our Benefits Page.

About Automattic

Now in our 20th year, Automattic is the company behind leading platforms like WordPress.com, WooCommerce, Beeper, Tumblr, Simplenote, Jetpack, Longreads, Day One, and PocketCasts. We are dedicated to enhancing the web. As a distributed company, we have over 1500 Automatticians spanning nearly every corner of the globe, speaking over a hundred languages. This diversity unites us in our core mission: to democratize publishing, commerce, and messaging. We aim to empower anyone with a story to tell it, anyone with a product to sell it, and everyone to manage their communications from a single source. We believe in maintaining societal balance by creating and continually refining powerful tools that enable fair competition, regardless of income, gender, politics, language, or geographical location. We are committed to Open Source, with the majority of our work available under the GPL. Automattic is recognized as a Most Loved Company, an Equal Opportunity employer, and Disability Confident Committed. We offer accommodations for disability-related needs during the application or interview process. Learn more about our Employee Resource Groups. You can track your application status at MyGreenhouse. Review our Privacy Policy for data handling details. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or protected veteran status. Automattic participates in the E-Verify program where required by law.