Director, Forward Deployed Engineering
Location: United States (Remote, with customer travel)
Reports To: VP, Professional Services
Employment Type: Full-Time, Permanent
Work Model: Remote within the US, with regular on-site customer visits
NOTE:
This is a player-coach leadership role, not a pure management seat. We are looking for leaders who can still get into the technical weeds with their engineers on a broken integration or a misbehaving AI workflow, and who are equally comfortable presenting to a CIO.
The Opportunity
Our client is a high-growth, venture-backed AI software company selling to large enterprises. Their platform uses large language models and AI agents to automate work across HR, IT and operations, and they are expanding quickly with global enterprise customers.
They are hiring a
Director of Forward Deployed Engineering
to build out and lead the engineering team responsible for getting their largest customers live. This team works directly inside customer environments, configuring AI agents, building automations and connecting the platform to core enterprise systems.
You will scale the team substantially over the next phase of growth, be accountable for delivery quality across every major deployment, and shape how the company rolls out AI agents to enterprise customers going forward. Most customer conversations in this role are technical, so credibility as an engineer matters as much as delivery management.
The company is looking for a rare mix: someone with genuine engineering depth, a long track record of landing complex enterprise implementations, and the instinct to turn one-off customer work into repeatable product.
What You'll Do
Team Leadership and Hiring
Build and scale the Forward Deployed Engineering team, owning hiring standards and the interview process.
Get new engineers ramped on the platform quickly so they can contribute to live customer work early.
Manage and develop the team through regular 1:1s, technical reviews and goal setting, with coaching on both engineering and client-facing skills.
Allocate engineering capacity across live implementations, pre-sales work and product contributions.
Deployment Delivery and Technical Oversight
Be accountable for predictable, high-quality go-lives across the customer portfolio, with clear standards for testing, launch and post-launch support.
Review
technical designs and integration plans
before they go to customers, catching issues with security, permissions, data access and scalability early.
Stay hands-on on the hardest problems,
including complex integrations with HRIS, ITSM, ERP and identity platforms.
Partner with Professional Services leadership, solutions and project management teams on staffing, capacity and forecasting.
Customer and Executive Partnership
Act as the senior technical lead on key accounts, working directly with CIOs, CHROs and security leaders.
Take ownership of escalations, from building the recovery plan through to resolution.
Support Sales on proofs of concept and scoping, defining realistic success criteria and protecting the team from over-commitment.
Field to Product and Scale
Feed what the team learns in customer environments back to Product and Engineering, identifying recurring custom work that should become standard platform functionality.
Create the team's operating playbook, including reusable integration approaches, templates and documentation.
Track and report on delivery performance, customer adoption and progress in reducing custom work.
What We're Looking For
Experience
12+ years across software engineering, solutions engineering or technical customer-facing
roles, with at least 4 years leading technical teams.
Experience leading a sizeable customer-facing engineering team (forward deployed, solutions, implementation or deployment engineers).
A strong history of
delivering enterprise software implementations into large, complex client
environments.
Experience shipping
AI or LLM-based products into production
for enterprise customers.
Evidence of turning field learnings into product capabilities.
Startup or scale-up SaaS experience, ideally having built process where little existed.
Technical Skills
A genuine engineering background, still able to review code, troubleshoot APIs and weigh in on architecture.
Strong knowledge of APIs, authentication and SSO standards, and enterprise integration patterns.
Experience with
major enterprise HR or IT platforms
.
Exposure to
agent orchestration frameworks, retrieval-augmented generation
or modern AI tool integration standards is a strong asset.
Ideal Background
Successful candidates may come from:
Forward deployed, solutions or deployment engineering leadership at AI or platform companies
Enterprise SaaS in HR tech, IT service management or workflow automation\
Technical delivery or professional services leadership at high-growth software companies
Leaders who have built a deployment function from an early stage
AI or automation consulting, especially with pre-sales and proof-of-concept experience
Work Arrangement
This is a remote role open to candidates based in the United States, with regular travel to customer sites. Candidates based outside the US are not a fit for this role.
Compensation
Competitive base salary
Plus meaningful equity and a performance bonus tied to delivery outcomes.
A chance to build a function that sits at the center of the business, with real influence on product direction and customer success.
Our client is an equal opportunity employer committed to creating a diverse and inclusive environment.