David Totten Joins Vercel to Lead Global Field Engineering

At Vercel, the focus is on closing the gap between idea and impact, and this is being driven by a new organizational strategy under David Totten, the newly appointed VP of Global Field Engineering. With a background from Databricks and nearly two decades at a Fortune 5 company, Totten is tasked with leading a unified team that includes Sales Engineering, Developer Success, Professional Services, and Customer Support Engineering, aiming to provide a seamless, consistent customer experience from the initial evaluation to long-term growth. Under his leadership, Vercel is leveraging artificial intelligence to enhance customer engagement and operational efficiency, as demonstrated by AI-powered support that handles the majority of customer cases and the strategic reallocation of sales development resources. The company is also investing in Forward Deployed Engineering to help clients integrate AI into their operations, emphasizing the importance of actionable, real-time insights as a competitive advantage. Vercel's approach treats its go-to-market (GTM) engineering strategy like a product, aiming to be the most AI-forward technical sales organization, which promises to deliver proven AI deployment practices rather than theoretical models, thus positioning itself at the forefront of the AI-driven business landscape.