Forward Deployed AI Engineer (Sales / Backend) (German-speaking), Warszawa

What Shelf Offers:

• Office in Warsaw, as occasional in-office presence will be required
• Competitive salary, equity, & benefits
• Realistic, clearly communicated expectations
• Team-wide aligned values and goals
• Comprehensive healthcare package with the freedom to choose your preferred provider
• Paid vacation, public holidays
• Hardware: MacBook Pro.

Job Description:

The Sales Engineer will serve as a forward-deployed technical expert (FDE), directly engaging with enterprise customers and leading proof-of-value (POV) engagements. This role combines deep technical expertise in data modeling and ontology design with strong customer-facing skills and hands-on implementation capabilities.

As a forward-deployed engineer, you will work closely with clients during intensive 3–5 day pilots, embedding within their teams to understand their data architectures, business challenges, and success criteria. You will be responsible not only for delivering high-quality technical solutions, but also for communicating clearly, building trust, and representing Shelf effectively from both a technical and business perspective.

This role sits at the intersection of Sales Engineering, Backend Engineering, and Customer Success. We are looking for candidates who can seamlessly transition between building robust technical solutions and engaging confidently with stakeholders. The ability to translate complex technical concepts into business value is critical.

You will design custom data models, configure reasoning agents, and rapidly iterate on solutions to demonstrate measurable impact. Working in close partnership with Account Executives and reporting to the Field CTO, you will take ownership of the technical evaluation phase and play a key role in converting prospects into customers.

Beyond new customer acquisition, you will support expansion within existing accounts and collaborate closely with Engineering to develop reusable templates, best practices, and scalable solutions.

The ideal candidate brings 5–10 years of experience across data platforms, backend systems, or data modeling, combined with strong communication and customer engagement skills. You are comfortable working independently in ambiguous environments, writing scripts, leveraging AI coding tools such as Claude Code, and delivering approximately 8–10 POVs per quarter. Experience with knowledge graphs, ontologies, or semantic technologies is highly preferred.

What we are looking for:

• Technical Depth - Strong data modeling, data platforms, and ETL/pipeline expertise; knowledge graphs and ontologies experience strongly preferred
• Forward-Deployed Engineer - Comfortable operating independently with prospects, leading technical engagements with minimal supervision
• Technical Problem Solver - Writes Python scripts, automates workflows, and leverages AI coding tools to rapidly build and iterate solutions during customer engagements
• Customer-Facing Excellence - Exceptional communication skills with technical and business stakeholders; comfortable presenting and iterating with customers
• Rapid Execution - Thrives in fast-paced 3-5 day pilot cycles; delivers value quickly and iterates based on feedback
• Sales-Oriented Mindset - Understands enterprise sales cycles and is motivated by converting POVs to closed deals
• Continuous Learner - Stays current with AI/GenAI trends, data technologies, and modern engineering practices

About Shelf

There is no AI Strategy without a Data Strategy. Getting GenAI to work is mission critical for most companies but 90% of AI projects haven't deployed. Why?

We've helped some of the best brands like Amazon, Mayo Clinic, AmFam, and Nespresso solve their data issues and deploy their AI strategy with Day 1 ROI. Shelf is partnered with Microsoft, Salesforce, Snowflake, Databricks, OpenAI and other big tech players who are bringing GenAI to the enterprise.

Our mission is to empower humanity with better answers everywhere.