Forward Deployed Engineer, HTS Assist

About the Job

The Forward Deployed Engineer plays a pivotal role in deploying, customizing, and optimizing Hopper's HTS Assist, an agentic AI voice and chat assistant for travel. This role ensures HTS Assist delivers seamless automated service experiences across partners.

As a Forward Deployed Engineer, you'll combine engineering depth with customer-facing collaboration. You'll embed directly with partners to design, implement, and iterate on AI-driven service automation — from API integration across telephony, CRM, travel supply systems and orchestration, to LLM prompt design, testing, and ongoing optimization — while providing data-driven insights and testing support to continuously improve performance and reliability.

Assist Platform Operations

• Configure and maintain HTS Assist deployments across partner environments, including conversational flows, LLM prompt management, and system orchestration

• Conduct user acceptance testing (UAT) and regression QA for voice/chat bots, measuring accuracy, latency, and conversational quality

• Monitor operational health through analytics and logging tools

• Contribute to design of self-serve configuration capabilities for partners

Partner Integration & Enablement

• Support technical and operational enablement for new partner integrations, including telephony (Twilio, Amazon Connect, Genesys, Five9, Avaya), CRM/ticketing systems (Salesforce, Zendesk, ServiceNow) and travel inventory platforms

• Work hands-on with partner engineers to implement and validate HTS Assist capabilities

• Maintain strong relationships with external and internal stakeholders

Data, Quality & Continuous Improvement

• Define and track Assist performance metrics including conversation accuracy, escalation frequency, latency, and policy adherence

• Design experiments and analyze conversation data using SQL, Python, and other data tools

• Partner with Engineering to define quality metrics for HTS Assist

• Contribute to prompt engineering and test new conversational behaviors

System Architecture & Workflow Automation

• Understand and document how telephony, CRM, and AI components interconnect

• Build and maintain automation scripts and deployed tools

• Ensure robust data governance, version control, and documentation

Minimal Qualifications

• Hands-on experience with APIs, JSON, SQL, and Python for data manipulation and automation

• Understanding of LLM-based systems, prompt design, and conversational AI testing

• Familiarity with voice synthesis and ASR technologies (ElevenLabs, Whisper, Deepgram, OpenAI Realtime)

• Knowledge of cloud telephony/CPaaS providers (Twilio, Amazon Connect, Genesys, Avaya, Five9)

• Experience with CRM and ticketing systems (Salesforce, Zendesk)

• Bias for action and exceptional ability to grasp complex systems

• Fluent in customer service metrics, SLAs, and support health indicators

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills

Preferred Qualifications

• Forward Deployed, Solutions Engineering, or Applied AI implementation experience

• Proficiency with operational tools such as Jira, Confluence, Amplitude, Datadog

• Travel technology ecosystem knowledge (GDSs, PMS/CRS platforms, OTA partner APIs)

• Experience implementing complex contact routing, IVRs, and customer journey flows with NICE IEX, Amazon Connect, Kustomer

• Prior experience with AI chatbot/voicebot operations and/or B2B SaaS integrations