Forward Deployed Engineer, HTS Assist

The Forward Deployed Engineer plays a pivotal role in deploying, customizing, and optimizing Hopper's HTS Assist, our agentic AI voice and chat assistant for travel. This role ensures the 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.

This role bridges applied AI engineering, field deployment, and partner co-creation, helping Hopper scale the next generation of autonomous service technology for the travel industry. It also plays a key part in Hopper's broader mission to scale the HTS Assist ecosystem; ensuring reliable, responsible, and partner-centric AI automation at every stage of deployment.

• 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 and tracking accuracy, latency, and overall conversational quality.

  • Monitor operational health through analytics and logging tools; identify issues and coordinate fixes with Product and Core Engineering.

  • Contribute to design of self-serve configuration capabilities for partners as HTS Assist evolves.

• Partner Integration & Enablement

  • Support both technical and operational enablement and onboarding for new partner integrations, including telephony (e.g., Twilio, Amazon Connect, Genesys, Five9, Avaya), CRM/ticketing systems (Salesforce, Zendesk, ServiceNow) and travel inventory platforms (PMS, GDS, CRS, etc.)

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

  • Maintain strong relationships with both external and internal stakeholders to ensure satisfaction, adoption, and continuous improvement of deployed solutions.

• Data, Quality & Continuous Improvement

  • Define and track Assist performance metrics including conversation accuracy, escalation frequency, latency, and adherence to partner policies.

  • Design experiments and analyze conversation data to improve HTS Assist outcomes, leveraging SQL, Python, and other data tools to identify trends and performance gaps.

  • Partner with Engineering to define, implement and refine quality metrics for HTS Assist, including accuracy, escalation rate, and response effectiveness.

  • Contribute to prompt engineering and test new conversational behaviors to ensure the assistant meets partner brand tone and customer expectations.

• System Architecture & Workflow Automation

  • Understand and document how telephony, CRM, and AI components interconnect; proactively identify risks or opportunities for workflow optimization.

  • Build and maintain automation scripts and deployed tools to streamline implementation and monitoring processes.

  • Ensure robust data governance, version control, and documentation for all integrations and configurations.

• Cross-Functional Collaboration

  • Serve as an operational liaison between Product, AI Engineering and operational teams to align product enhancements with operational needs.

  • Act as an incident manager when outages or performance issues arise, ensuring swift triage, communication, and resolution.

  • Support roadmap planning with data-backed insights into feature adoption, partner feedback, and operational pain points.

• Technical Proficiency

  • Hands-on experience with APIs, JSON, SQL, and Python for data manipulation, workflow validation, and automation using frameworks such as Postman or Airflow.

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

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

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

  • Experience with CRM and ticketing systems (Salesforce, Zendesk, or equivalent) and their connection to voice/chat workflows.

• Analytical & Problem-Solving

  • Bias for action and drive to work autonomously, taking initiative to research problems, find solutions, and communicate with stakeholders.

  • Ability to clarify, analyze, and investigate operational needs, identify potential roadblocks, and develop viable, cost-effective solutions.

  • Exceptional ability to grasp, manage, and articulate complex systems.

  • Excellent judgment; ability to ask smart questions and make quick, impactful decisions.

• Operational Excellence

  • High level of curiosity, operational awareness, exceptional attention to detail, and a broad understanding of contact centers, live support tool operations, and both user and agent behaviors.

  • Strong organizational and prioritization skills to manage multiple projects or tasks of varying complexity while meeting deadlines and performing well under pressure.

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

  • Passionate about delivering excellent service and customer outcomes, demonstrating care for both partner success and end-customer satisfaction in every interaction and system design.

  • Resilient attitude; ability to adapt quickly to change and maintain composure in dynamic environments.

• Communication & Collaboration

  • Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English.

  • Excellent communication and stakeholder-management skills across technical and non-technical audiences.

  • Customer, team, and company player, taking on delegated tasks with enthusiasm toward the greater good of the company.

  • A passion for Hopper's mission to build the most customer-centric travel marketplace.

• Operational Tools & Ecosystems

  • Experience in a Forward Deployed, Solutions Engineering, or Applied AI implementation role is highly preferred.

  • Proficiency with operational tools such as Jira, Confluence, Amplitude, Datadog, and Google Sheets.

  • Technical and operational awareness of the travel technology ecosystem, including reservation and booking systems (e.g., GDSs such as Amadeus, Sabre, Travelport), hotel PMS/CRS platforms, and OTA partner APIs for flights, hotels, and ancillary products.

  • Deep subject matter expertise in customer service operations and product ecosystems.

• Telephony & Workflow Management

  • Experience implementing and maintaining complex contact routing, IVRs, skillset libraries, and customer journey flows using technologies such as NICE IEX, Amazon Connect, and Kustomer.

• AI & SaaS Integrations

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

  • Demonstrated ability to manage complex partner integrations from kickoff through steady-state support.

  • Experience translating technical performance metrics into actionable recommendations for partners or internal teams.

• Data Visualization & Insights

  • Ability to effectively influence stakeholders by creating compelling data visualizations that communicate complex insights clearly and impactfully.

  • Exposure to data analytics and visualization tools (Amplitude, Datadog, Looker, or equivalent).

#LI-REMOTE

At Hopper, we are on a mission to become the leading travel platform globally – powering Hopper's mobile app, website and our B2B business, HTS (Hopper Technology Solutions). By leveraging massive amounts of data and advanced machine learning algorithms, Hopper combines its world-class travel agency offering with proprietary fintech products to bring transparency, flexibility and savings to travelers globally. We have developed several unique fintech solutions that address everything from pricing volatility to trip disruptions – helping people travel better and save more on their trips.

The Hopper platform serves hundreds of millions of travelers globally and continues to capture market share around the world. The Hopper app has been downloaded over 120 million times and has become largely popular among younger travelers – with 70% of its users being Gen Z and millennials.

While everyone knows us as the Gen Z and Millennial travel app, Hopper has evolved to become much more than that. In recent years, we've grown into a travel fintech provider, commerce platform, and global travel agency that powers some of the world's largest brands.

Through HTS, our B2B division, the company supercharges its partners' direct channels by integrating our fintech products on their sites or powering end-to-end travel portals. Today, our partners include leading travel brands like Capital One, Nubank, Air Canada, and many more.

Here are just a few stats that demonstrate the company's recent growth:

• Billions of dollars worth of travel and travel fintech are sold through Hopper and HTS' channels every year.

  • Our fintech products – including Cancel for Any Reason and Flight Disruption Assistance – have exceptionally strong CSAT because the terms are always clear, and customers receive instant, no-questions-asked resolutions.

  • Almost 30% of our app customers purchase at least one fintech product when making a booking; and consumers are 1.6x more likely to repurchase if they add fintech to their booking vs if they booked just travel.

• Given the success of its fintech products, Hopper launched a B2B initiative, HTS (Hopper Technology Solutions), which represents more than 75% of the business.

  • Through HTS, any travel provider (airlines, hotels, banks, travel agencies, etc.) can integrate and seamlessly distribute Hopper's fintech or travel inventory on their direct channels. As its first HTS partnership, the company partnered with Capital One to co-develop Capital One Travel, a new travel portal designed specifically for cardholders. Other HTS partners include Air Canada, Uber, CommBank, Nubank, Flair Airlines and many more.

Hopper has been named the #1 most innovative company in travel by Fast Company.

We have raised over $750 million USD of private capital and are backed by some of the largest institutional investors and banks in the world. HTS is primed to continue its growth as the leading travel ecommerce provider in a $1 trillion online shopping category. The Hopper app and website will also continue to be the preferred travel provider for Gen Z and Millennials.

Come take off with us