Field Engineer (Founding Role)

Company Description

Upriver is building the first Autonomous Data Engineer, an AI teammate that understands your data platform and automates data engineering workflows end-to-end. Founded by Talpiot alumni and backed by leading data and AI investors, we’ve recently closed our seed round and already work with customers like Unity and Bright Data.

We’re hiring a Technical Customer Success Engineer to take direct ownership of customer outcomes. This role sits at the intersection of customers, engineering, and product. You will be responsible for making sure customers adopt Upriver, extract value from it, and trust it enough to renew.

This is a hands-on, execution-first position for someone who wants clear ownership over customers and outcomes.

What You'll Do

• Own customers end-to-end: Be the primary technical point of contact from onboarding through ongoing usage and renewal.
• Drive adoption and value: Actively guide customers on how to use Upriver effectively, aligned to their real goals and constraints.
• Translate customer reality into internal action: Convert vague or mis-scoped customer requests into clear, actionable input for engineering and product.
• Lead through incidents and friction: Own customer communication during issues you did not necessarily cause, and maintain trust under pressure.
• Exercise judgment with customers: Know when to push back, when to escalate, and when to say “not yet” without damaging the relationship.
• Work tightly with engineering: Debug issues, validate fixes, and close the loop with customers quickly and clearly.
• Eliminate repeat problems: Identify patterns across customer issues and push for lightweight changes that reduce recurrence.
• Operate autonomously: Define success, prioritize work, and move forward without waiting for playbooks or perfect context.

What We're Looking For

• Strong technical background. Data engineering, backend, platform, or solutions engineering experience.
• Proven ability to work directly with customers or stakeholders in high-trust, high-responsibility situations.
• Comfort operating without clear boundaries, authority, or established processes.
• Clear, structured communicator who can explain technical tradeoffs without hiding behind jargon.
• Strong judgment under pressure and willingness to own outcomes, not just effort.
• Motivation to be accountable for customer adoption, value, and renewal.
• Nice to have:
• Experience supporting data platforms, analytics tools, or developer-facing products.
• Prior exposure to incidents, escalations, or production issues involving customers.
• Background as a solutions architect, field engineer, or technical account manager.

Why Upriver

• Direct ownership: You will own real customers and real outcomes.
• High trust, low ceremony: Work directly with founders and engineering, without layers of process.
• Technically serious work: Customer success here requires deep technical understanding.
• Early-stage leverage: Strong traction, real usage, and the ability to materially shape how customers experience the product.
• Clear growth path: Start by executing and owning. Over time, help shape better patterns as the company scales.