Lead Forward Deployed Engineer

About the role

Lead Forward Deployed Engineers (FDE) are the most senior technical leaders in the FDE organization. They own the overall technical strategy for the FDE domain, not just individual engagements, and are accountable for how the entire function operates, scales, and improves over time. They set direction across multiple concurrent engagements, teams, and quarters, and are the technical voice the organization relies on when stakes, ambiguity, or cross-functional complexity are highest. This role sits at the intersection of technical depth, organizational strategy, and people leadership, setting the technical bar for the function, shaping how Product and Engineering prioritize based on field reality, and developing the next generation of Staff-level FDEs. We are looking to speak to candidates who are based in New York City for our hybrid working model.

Key facts

What you'll do

• Orchestrate the FDE organization's engagement strategy, translating portfolio ambiguity into coherent multi-quarter technical narratives for the most critical and high-visibility initiatives.
• Serve as the trusted technical counterpart to customer executives and internal VP/executive stakeholders, articulating strategic bets, major risks, and cross-portfolio tradeoffs with clarity and conviction.
• Establish the technical architecture standards and design principles that govern how the FDE domain builds customer-facing solutions and platform capabilities, ensuring long-term coherence.
• Remain hands-on where it matters most, writing and reviewing code and personally unblocking the hardest technical failures to keep the organization's technical bar grounded in reality.
• Own the translation of field-wide patterns into the FDE domain's long-term technical vision, representing that vision to Product and Engineering executive leadership and defending multi-quarter roadmap tradeoffs.
• Drive the technical growth and career development of FDEs through mentorship, coaching, and calibration of the org's technical bar, while playing a lead role in hiring and leveling decisions.
• Act as the final point of technical judgment when the team is deadlocked, and represent the FDE function in executive and cross-org planning forums to align on strategic direction.
• Synthesize complex, real-world field feedback into actionable insights that shape how Product and Engineering prioritize their roadmaps and investment areas.
• Evaluate emerging technologies and architectural approaches, determining their applicability and value at the scale and risk profile of enterprise engagements.
• Partner with Product and Engineering leadership to ensure that FDE solutions integrate cleanly with broader platform capabilities and meet stringent reliability and security standards.

Requirements

• Bring 10+ years of relevant engineering experience, including a demonstrated track record of hands-on technical leadership in production systems and complex enterprise environments.
• Show proven success setting technical strategy and direction at an organizational level, shaping how an entire function operates rather than leading initiatives within a single team.
• Demonstrate experience designing and directing production-grade integrations, platforms, or distributed systems across multiple concurrent engagements or teams.
• Exhibit excellent technical judgment under high ambiguity, with a track record of making and being accountable for organization-level tradeoffs between customer impact, speed, maintainability, and risk.
• Display a proven ability to influence and align VP/executive-level stakeholders, both internally and at customer organizations, on strategic technical direction.
• Illustrate a track record of developing senior and staff-level engineers through mentorship, coaching, and technical calibration, with willingness to travel up to 30% for executive engagements and technical reviews.
• Hold a strong background in building and operating systems that require high availability, scalability, and robust security practices.
• Commit to operating with transparency and integrity, aligning decisions with the broader mission and values of the organization.

Nice to have

• Preferred: experience setting technical strategy for LLM, agent framework, retrieval, evaluation, or production AI systems at an organizational level.
• Prior experience as a Staff-level FDE.
• Experience contributing to hiring bar-raising or leveling frameworks at organizational scale.

Practical notes

Travel up to 30% is required for executive engagements and technical reviews.