Field Engineer (Presales) - Northeast (Boston/NY)

Job description

Tessl is a fast-growing Series A startup based in London, founded by Guy Podjarny. We’ve raised over $100M from world-class investors including Index Ventures, Accel, GV, and Boldstart, and in 2025 we were ranked #2 in Sifted EU’s B2B SaaS Rising 100 and #20 in Sifted's AI 100. At Tessl, we are building the context layer for AI coding agents, and a platform for AI-native software development. As an early member of the team, you’ll help shape how we build, scale and support a company operating at the edge of AI and software development. OVERVIEW OF ROLE We're looking for a Field Engineer who lives and breathes the AI space. Someone already deep in the AI developer ecosystem, building with it, talking about it, and pushing what's possible with it every day. In this role, you'll be a power user of our product and a trusted technical partner to our customers. That means running deeply tailored demos, designing solutions that map to how engineering teams actually work, and helping developers and platform teams understand what AI-native software development can really look like. You'll engage deeply with the community, and bridge the field back to our product and engineering teams. WHAT YOU'LL DO - Help build field engineering from the ground up — as one of the first field engineers at Tessl, you'll help define how we engage customers technically, shape the playbooks, and establish the systems and processes that scale with the team - Own the technical relationship in sales cycles — run demos, answer hard questions, and build trust with engineering audiences ranging from individual developers to CTOs - Understand customers' environments — their agent tooling, developer workflows, CI/CD pipelines — and design solutions that map to how their teams actually work - Guide onboarding and adoption — work with customers post-sale to ensure they're getting real value from the platform, not just licenses - Code alongside the product team — contribute to product development, build integrations, and prototype solutions that inform the roadmap based on what you see in the field - Build AI-first GTM tooling — design and ship internal tools that make our go-to-market motion smarter: automated demos, AI-assisted onboarding, technical qualification tooling, and more - Surface product insights — act as the voice of the field back to engineering and product; the patterns you see across customers are signal we need WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR - A builder first — you write code, not just read it; you're comfortable shipping integrations, tooling, and prototypes as part of the job, not as a side activity - Deep sales cycle fluency — you've operated in enterprise technical sales, understand the full arc from qualification to close, and know how to navigate multiple stakeholders, technical evaluations, and POCs without losing momentum - Full customer lifecycle ownership — you're as comfortable driving post-sale success as you are closing pre-sale; you care about customers getting real outcomes, not just signing contracts - Fluency in the AI tooling ecosystem — you know how tools like Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot, and Gemini work and how engineering teams are adopting them day-to-day - Comfort with ambiguity — field engineering at Tessl doesn't have a defined playbook yet; you'll write it, and you're energised by that rather than unsettled - Clear technical communicator — you can make complex ideas legible to both skeptical engineers and less-technical stakeholders - Collaborative by default — you work fluidly across sales, product, and engineering, and you treat what you learn in the field as shared intelligence - 5+ years of experience in a field engineering, solutions engineering, or technical pre-sales role SALARY AND BENEFITS We offer a competitive salary commensurate with experience and skills. We provide health insurance which extends to partners and dependents, as well as a pension. APPLICATION PROCESS Here’s an outline of what you can expect during our interview process: - Recruiter screen — an introductory call to discuss the role, your background, and mutual fit - Hiring manager screen — a culture and ownership fit conversation with Tom (Field Engineering Lead) - Technical screen — a scenario-based interview focused on real-world field engineering situations, not a coding test, covering both technical scenarios and commercial acumen - Presentation — a two-part exercise: one topic you know well, one you’ve recently learned; may include a short AI-related task - Final Chat - Leadership call We care deeply about the warm, inclusive environment we’re building at Tessl and we value diversity – we welcome applications from those typically underrepresented in tech. If you like the sound of this role but are not totally sure whether you’re the right person, do apply anyway! LEARN HOW WE THINK AND WORK - On Tessl, The AI Native Development Startup https://www.tessl.io/blog/announcing-tessl-the-ai-native-development-startup - Announcing skills on Tessl: the package manager for agent skills https://tessl.io/blog/skills-are-software-and-they-need-a-lifecycle-introducing-skills-on-tessl/ - Podcast Episode: The End of Fragmented Agent Context, Guy Podjarny Tessl CEO https://youtu.be/ntkM-hRblfo