Director of Forward Deployed Engineering

Director of Forward Deployed Engineering

Location: New York City
Work Style: Hybrid, 3 days per week in office
Employment Type: Full-time
Focus: Forward Deployed Engineering, AI Decisioning, Financial Services, Enterprise Implementation, Technical Leadership

About Our Client

Our client is building the infrastructure that helps financial institutions become truly AI-native.

Their platform enables banks, fintechs, insurers, and other financial organizations to combine AI agents, rules, business context, and human oversight to automate and optimize high-stakes decisions across areas like onboarding, underwriting, claims, fraud, AML, and financial operations.

The company powers millions of decisions daily for leading financial institutions and has raised significant funding from top-tier investors. As customer demand grows, they are scaling the forward deployed engineering organization responsible for turning complex enterprise contracts into production-grade AI and decisioning solutions.

About the Role

Our client is hiring a Director of Forward Deployed Engineering to lead the North America FDE organization.

This is a hands-on leadership role for someone who has led forward deployed, implementation, delivery, or solutions engineering teams through complex enterprise deployments.

This person will lead a team of 15-20 Forward Deployed Engineers while also acting as a senior technical leader on the most complex customer engagements. You'll own the delivery operating model, implementation standards, team capacity, tooling, and execution quality that allow the organization to move quickly while consistently delivering production value.

This is a player-coach role. You'll manage and scale the team, but you'll also remain close to the work - solution architecture, customer problem-solving, platform configuration, AI-agent training, evaluations, and hands-on delivery when a project needs it.

What You'll Do

• Lead a team of 15-20 Forward Deployed Engineers across North America
• Own delivery outcomes for signed customer contracts through successful production go-live
• Own the quarterly go-live ARR metric for the region
• Manage implementation operations, including backlog, pipeline, project staffing, capacity, milestones, and outcomes
• Build and scale the FDE-led delivery motion across enterprise customers
• Define the operating model, tooling, and standards for production-grade AI delivery
• Partner with product and engineering to build reusable FDE tooling, implementation patterns, and delivery infrastructure
• Advocate for team priorities with product and engineering leaders to unblock key customer implementations
• Hire, develop, coach, and retain high-performing FDE talent
• Act as principal FDE and solution architect on the most complex deployments
• Lead technical problem-solving sessions with customer teams and internal engineering teams
• Provide clear signal to product and engineering on product-market fit, customer needs, product gaps, and enhancement opportunities
• Stay hands-on with platform configuration, AI-agent training, evaluations, data workflows, and delivery execution
• Ensure implementations are scalable, maintainable, and aligned with strong solution principles

What We're Looking For

• 10 years of experience in Forward Deployed Engineering, Implementation Engineering, Solutions Engineering, Delivery Engineering, or a similar technical customer-facing role
• Experience leading complex enterprise implementations in B2B SaaS environments
• Track record owning large, multi-quarter deployments with seven-figure ARR impact
• Experience managing and growing teams, ideally with 5 direct reports
• Strong technical foundation in areas such as software engineering, computer science, mathematics, data science, physics, or similar disciplines
• Strong production Python and SQL skills
• Fluency with REST APIs, batch data pipelines, and data warehouse integrations
• Ability to operate as both a technical leader and a business partner
• Strong communication skills across engineers, executives, customers, product teams, and GTM stakeholders
• Ability to manage implementation complexity while maintaining strong system principles
• Collaborative, curious, low-ego leadership style
• Strong customer advocacy while balancing maintainability, scalability, and product direction
• Ability to work from the New York City office at least 3 days per week

Ideal Qualifications

• Experience building AI applications within financial services
• Experience applying or optimizing statistical models or machine learning models to solve business problems
• Experience in business onboarding, business loan underwriting, insurance claims, fraud, AML, or financial crime investigations
• Experience with AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Platform, or another major cloud platform
• Experience building tooling or operating systems for forward deployed or implementation teams
• Experience scaling a technical delivery organization during a high-growth phase

Why This Opportunity

• Lead a high-impact Forward Deployed Engineering organization at a fast-growing AI infrastructure company
• Own the delivery engine that turns signed enterprise contracts into production value
• Build and scale an FDE operating model across North America
• Work directly on AI-native decisioning systems for financial institutions
• Partner closely with product, engineering, GTM, and founding leadership
• Stay hands-on as a senior technical leader while developing a team of FDEs
• Shape tooling, standards, delivery practices, and implementation quality across the organization
• Join a company powering millions of financial decisions daily with strong investor backing and global reach

Compensation & Benefits

• Top-of-market cash and equity compensation
• Self-development budget for conferences, books, courses, and professional growth
• Equipment of choice and meaningful home office setup support
• Opportunity to work closely with founders, senior leaders, investors, and advisors
• High-growth environment with significant personal and professional development

Ideal Candidate Profile

The ideal candidate is a technical delivery leader who deeply believes in the FDE-led AI delivery model.

They have scaled teams, led complex enterprise implementations, and stayed sharp enough technically to step into the hardest customer deployments. They can coach FDEs, solve architecture problems, speak with executives, unblock engineering teams, and turn customer complexity into repeatable delivery systems.

This person is both a builder and an operator - someone who can lead the team, own the number, and still get hands-on when the work demands it.