Forward Deployed Engineer (WordPress VIP Customer Engineering & Architecture)

At WordPress VIP (part of Automattic), we power the most influential properties on the web, from the White House to Meta and Salesforce. We are looking for a Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) to join our mission in redefining how the world’s largest enterprises scale. This isn’t your typical engineering role; it’s an advanced, consultative position where you operate as a hands-on architect and a growth catalyst. As an FDE, you are the front line of trust, embedded with our most strategic customers to solve high-stakes technical challenges in real-time. By combining engineering excellence with deep customer proximity, you won’t just solve problems for customers, you’ll solve them with them, driving business expansion across the world’s most scaled environments. If you thrive in high-impact, ambiguous environments and want to help define the future of open-source technology at the enterprise level, we want to talk to you.

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 process improvements, including delivery platforms, AI workflows, and documentation systems (e.g., Rocketlane, Notion, or similar).

Contribute to the Forward Deployed Engineering Practice

• Using data,...