Head of FDE
CodeRound is hiring for this role.
- FDE Manager
- Head of FDE
- Forward Deployed Engineer
- Forward Deployed Engineering
- FDE Leadership
- Engineering Manager
- Technical Lead
- Engineering Leadership
- Solutions Architect
- Solutions Engineering
- AI Engineering
- Generative AI
- LLM
- AI Agents
- Agentic AI
- RAG
- Machine Learning
- Data Engineering
- Data Pipelines
- Enterprise Software
- Enterprise Data
- Cloud Computing
- AWS
- GCP
- Azure
- System Design
- API Integrations
- Data Migration
- Professional Services
- Customer Engineering
- Technical Consulting
- Terraform
- Pulumi
- Python
- Startup
- AI Startup
We are looking for an FDE Manager / Head of Forward Deployed Engineering to lead and scale a high-performing FDE team while remaining deeply hands-on technically. This is a player-coach role for someone who can operate as a strong Tech Lead, design and build production-grade AI and agentic systems, and simultaneously manage customer engagements and engineering teams. You will own the technical quality and delivery of customer engagements, work directly with senior enterprise stakeholders, and help customers solve complex problems involving AI agents, data pipelines, integrations, migrations, and enterprise systems. Alongside this, you will hire, mentor, and manage FDEs while establishing strong engineering and delivery standards across the team.
What you'll do
- Lead the technical direction across all Forward Deployed Engineering engagements.
- Design and oversee production-grade solutions involving AI agents, data pipelines, integrations, and enterprise systems.
- Remain hands-on by writing code, reviewing architecture and PRs, and personally stepping into complex technical problems when required.
- Hire, onboard, mentor, and manage FDEs while building a strong engineering culture focused on ownership and customer impact.
- Staff customer engagements appropriately based on technical requirements, engineer strengths, and project timelines.
- Act as the senior technical face of the company in customer meetings, discovery sessions, architecture workshops, and escalations.
- Partner with Sales and Account teams on pre-sales, solution design, effort estimation, and SOW development.
- Establish engineering and delivery standards covering testing, observability, security, documentation, and quality.
- Identify repeatable patterns across customer engagements and turn them into reusable connectors, skills, playbooks, templates, and engineering assets.
- Track delivery health across engagements, proactively identifying risks around scope, timelines, quality, and customer satisfaction.
Must have
7+ years of software engineering experience, with at least 3 years in a Tech Lead, Engineering Manager, FDE, Solutions Architect, or similar leadership role. Strong individual-contributor background with the ability to design systems, write code, review PRs, and solve complex technical problems hands-on. Hands-on experience building and deploying LLM-powered applications and agentic AI systems, including agent orchestration, tool use, retrieval, and knowledge systems. Strong experience with cloud platforms such as AWS, GCP, or Azure and production-grade software engineering practices. Proven experience in customer-facing engineering, such as Forward Deployed Engineering, Solutions Engineering, Technical Consulting, Professional Services, or Solutions Architecture. Strong understanding of enterprise data systems, data pipelines, integrations, migrations, or large-scale data environments. Demonstrated experience hiring, mentoring, managing, and developing engineers, including performance management and career development. Excellent communication skills with the ability to work directly with CTOs, engineering leaders, enterprise customers, founders, and internal technical teams.
Good to have
Experience leading an FDE, Solutions Engineering, Professional Services, or Technical Consulting team, preferably at an AI or developer-platform company. Experience with enterprise systems such as SAP, Oracle, Snowflake, Databricks, or large-scale legacy modernization programs. Familiarity with enterprise security requirements including SSO, RBAC, tenant isolation, data residency, compliance, and security reviews. Experience with Infrastructure-as-Code, particularly Terraform or Pulumi. Experience designing and evaluating AI agents, RAG systems, knowledge bases, tool calling, and agent evaluation frameworks. Experience working with data engineering, ETL/ELT pipelines, APIs, integrations, and enterprise migrations. Experience managing customer engagements across multiple geographies and time zones, particularly India–US engagements. Experience working in an early-stage startup where you have built processes, teams, and solutions from the ground up.