Director, Forward Deployed Engineering

Responsibilities

• Lead the Forward Deployed Engineering function across strategic customer deployments
• Own planning, staffing, prioritization, and delivery governance for engineering engagements
• Manage and develop FDE team members, including senior individual contributors and team leads
• Establish repeatable deployment practices, technical standards, and operating mechanisms
• Partner with Deployment Strategy to translate customer needs into technical delivery plans
• Collaborate with Product, Engineering, and Research to inform platform capabilities and roadmap priorities
• Serve as a senior technical leader in strategic customer engagements and executive-level discussions
• Ensure deployments are designed for production adoption, security, reliability, and scalability
• Identify delivery risks early and implement corrective actions
• Support deployments in regulated environments with complex security and infrastructure constraints
• Define success metrics including production adoption, deployment velocity, and team capacity

Requirements

• 10+ years of experience in software engineering, technical delivery, or solutions architecture
• 5+ years of experience leading engineering or technical delivery teams
• Proven experience leading complex end-to-end deployments of production software systems
• Strong technical foundation in full-stack systems, cloud/on-prem infrastructure, APIs, and data integrations
• Experience with AI, machine learning, LLM, or data-intensive systems
• Demonstrated ability to lead broad technical functions through managers or senior ICs
• Strong executive communication skills for partnering with C-level stakeholders
• Ability to operate in ambiguous environments and make sound technical tradeoffs
• Experience building operating models and delivery processes for scaling organizations
• Ability to travel up to 50%

Preferred Qualifications

• Prior experience leading Forward Deployed Engineering, Solutions Engineering, or Field Engineering teams
• Familiarity with retrieval systems, knowledge graphs, semantic search, or agentic workflows
• Experience scaling a technical services function in a high-growth startup environment

Benefits

• Competitive Salary
• Comprehensive Health, Dental, and Vision insurance
• 401(k) Plan
• Flexible PTO
• Growth and development opportunities
• Catered lunches and snacks
• Team bonding events