Sales Engineer

Productboard•San Francisco, CA

12d•$91,875 - $122,500•Hybrid

About The Position

Productboard is seeking an experienced Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) to join their Go-To-Market team. This role is an evolution of the traditional Sales Engineer function, designed for engineers who want to go beyond software demos. As an FDE, you will be embedded in the field, collaborating with prospects and customers to address real-world problems. You will also play a crucial role in shaping the product by bringing back insights gained from customer interactions. You will be the primary technical point of contact in sales cycles and will be responsible for customer success, from initial discovery calls to successful, value-generating deployments. Your responsibilities include driving discovery, architecting solutions, conducting proofs-of-concept (PoCs) for both the core platform and Productboard Spark (an AI agent for product managers), and ensuring a strong feedback loop between customer needs and future product development. This is a senior, high-visibility position within a critical function at Productboard. You will interact with executives, represent the company on a global scale, and be a key resource for both customers and internal teams. This role is ideal for individuals who want their work to directly impact revenue, customer success, and the future direction of the product.

Requirements

4+ years in a Sales Engineering, Solutions Engineering, or Forward Deployed Engineering role at a B2B SaaS company.
A genuine builder's instinct — you don't just demo, you configure, integrate, and prototype live solutions in front of customers.
Hands-on experience with REST APIs, webhooks, and SaaS integration patterns; comfortable getting into the technical weeds during an evaluation.
Proven ability to drive complex, multi-stakeholder deal cycles — you can navigate technical buyers, IT, and the C-suite in the same engagement.
Strong understanding of how product, engineering, and customer success teams operate — you can speak credibly to a CPO and a Staff Engineer in the same meeting.
Exceptional communication and presentation skills; you translate complexity into clarity and make the technical feel accessible.
A product-minded perspective — you naturally ask "why does this customer need this?" and connect the answer to something bigger.
A bias for ownership — you follow through, take accountability, and don't wait to be asked.

Nice To Haves

Familiarity with product management tools (Productboard, Jira Product Discovery, Aha!, etc.), AI assisted workflows, or customer feedback platforms.
Hands-on experience with Productboard Spark or similar AI product agents is a strong plus.
Experience scripting lightweight automations or integrations (Python, JavaScript) to accelerate PoC delivery.
Comfort presenting to senior audiences — panels, executive dinners, or conference stages — and representing a company's technical vision publicly.

Responsibilities

Partner with Account Executives to drive complex, multi-stakeholder deal cycles, leading deep technical discovery, uncovering pain points, and aligning Productboard's core platform and Spark's AI-first capabilities to customer business objectives.
Deliver high-impact presentations, demos, and solution briefings that articulate Productboard's differentiated story and connect capabilities directly to the customer's strategic problems.
Own all technical aspects of the sales cycle: scoping and running PoCs in live environments, wiring up integrations, responding to RFPs, validating API and architecture fit, and identifying expansion opportunities at existing accounts.
Act as Productboard's eyes and ears in the field, synthesizing patterns across prospects and customers (recurring objections, missing capabilities, workflow gaps) into structured, actionable product intelligence.
Serve as the primary liaison between Sales, Product, and Marketing, sharing field insights that shape the roadmap, integration strategy, and positioning.
Build repeatable PoC frameworks, demo environments, and technical playbooks that scale insights across the FDE team.
Represent Productboard at industry events, conferences, and roadshows as a credible technical voice, speaking on stage, running booth demos, and engaging prospects in conversations about AI-first product management.
Host and lead high-touch executive dinners, Product Leader roundtables, and panels globally, building relationships with CPOs, VPs of Product, and senior practitioners.
Develop and deliver thought leadership content with Marketing, including talks, live demos, and session formats that showcase the core platform and Spark in real-world contexts.
For strategic accounts: Co-build the solution with the customer to secure the technical win, designing configurations, validating integrations, and proving value in their environment, ensuring a clean handoff to AI Success.
For scale accounts: Own activation end-to-end, configuring integrations (Jira, Salesforce, Zendesk, Azure DevOps, Slack, etc.), designing workspace structures aligned to the customer's product operating model, and driving them to first value.
Build scalable activation assets, such as guided setup flows, integration templates, and self-serve onboarding resources, to make scale-motion delivery repeatable.