Dominic Jodoin had spent 15 successful years working as a software developers, but he was missing two things. One was a lack of feedback about the impact his work was having. The second was a more active sense he was being helpful to people. Becoming what is being called a customer experience (CX) engineer has addressed both of those areas.
As the vice-president of customer engineering at Botpress, provider of an enterprise-grade AI agent platform based out of Montreal, Jodoin now spends his days on the frontlines with customers who are trying to bring intelligent automation to large organizations.
He still works with developers, but he’s not necessarily creating software. And he’s providing support, but at more complex level than a contact center rep.
“I’m feeling way better about the work I’m doing,” Jodoin told 360 Magazine in a video interview. “It’s really a mix of problem solving and feeling helpful.”
The problem is that problem solving and feeling helpful could describe a lot of roles. CX engineering, which has been slowly emerging as a term online, has yet to be defined in a way that would allow employers to create a standard job description.
BotPress
One posting, for instance, says candidates should have five years’ experience as a CX engineer commissioning, reviewing and testing systems while coordinating with a wide range of stakeholders. Another says the CX engineer it seeks will act as “a post-sales technical subject matter expert responsible for scaling deep product adoption.”
A post on Forbes suggested a CX engineer “maximizes automation quality, not just automation percentage.” This resonates with Jodoin, who said experts are advocating for CX engineering roles partly in response to the intricacies of bringing agentic AI to life in common customer-facing workflows.
“AI requires a lot of work,” he said. “A lot of it involves offering quality assurance and making sure the AI or the chatbot has the right guardrail and access to the right up-to-date documentation. At the end of the day, (a CX engineer) helps the organization in terms of scaling AI.”
CX engineering may open up a new career pathway for those whose jobs may be displaced by AI to some extent. This includes those in contact center jobs as well as marketing professionals and even support analysts. Jodoin cited log literacy, data fluency and experimental discipline among the potential skill sets, though he added having a software development or IT background may not be a perquisite to make the transition so much as an openness and aptitude for learning.
“I don’t think they need necessarily to invest in increasing their technical depth and learning all kinds of programming languages,” Jodoin said. “I think what’s more important is trying to become a kind of AI power user, familiarizing yourself with the big players, learning prompt engineering techniques, and just trying to use it every day to be more productive.”
CX engineers may not be isolated within dedicated CX functions but move fluidly between product teams and service departments, Jodoin said. And they may eventually become a more familiar sight in vertical industries outside of AI and tech itself.
“I think it’s all going to depend on the size of the organization and the volume of customer interactions that they’re serving,” he said. “It’s within the bigger, more structured organizations, I think, where we’re going to see this role emerge.”