Forward Deployment Engineer

Forward Deployed Engineering sits at the intersection of Engineering, Product, AI, and Customer Success. Unlike traditional engineering teams that primarily build platform capabilities, the FDE team works directly with enterprise customers to understand business problems, design solutions, build custom workflows, deploy AI agents, and drive measurable business outcomes. You will lead a team responsible for taking customers from: "We want to automate this workflow"
to "The AI employee is live, measurable, and delivering business value. "
This is a highly hands-on leadership role. You will be expected to switch seamlessly between: Customer discussions, Solution architecture, Engineering reviews, Production debugging, Delivery planning, and Team leadership. No two customer deployments look the same. Success in this role requires strong technical judgment, adaptability, and ownership.
Responsibilities:
Lead the Forward Deployed Engineering Team.
Manage and mentor a team of Forward Deployed Engineers.
Establish a high-performance engineering culture.
Drive execution across multiple customer deployments.
Help engineers navigate ambiguity and technical complexity.
Participate in hiring and team building.
Create an environment of accountability, ownership, and continuous improvement.
Own Customer Success Through Engineering
Work directly with enterprise customers to:
Understand business workflows.
Identify automation opportunities.
Translate requirements into technical solutions.
Design AI-powered workflows:
Lead customer deployments from design to production.
Ensure successful adoption and measurable outcomes.
You will regularly engage with: CTOs, Engineering leaders, Product leaders, Operations teams, Customer support organisations, Business stakeholders.
Architect AI Solutions:
Design and review solutions involving: Voice AI, Agent orchestration, Workflow automation, Enterprise integrations, Knowledge retrieval systems, CRM integrations, Telephony platforms, Customer support systems.
You should be comfortable moving from business requirements to technical architecture with minimal guidance.
Remain Deeply Hands-On.
This is not a purely managerial position.
You should be capable of reviewing production code.
Conducting architecture reviews.
Debugging production incidents.
Building prototypes.
Helping engineers solve complex technical problems.
Evaluating engineering tradeoffs.
Identifying reliability and scalability risks.
While you may not write production code every day, you should be capable of personally building and debugging systems when required.
Drive Execution:
Balance customer commitments with engineering capacity.
Prioritise effectively across multiple deployments.
Identify delivery risks early.
Manage scope and stakeholder expectations.
Ensure predictable execution and delivery quality.
Improve Operational Excellence:
Lead production incident reviews.
Improve observability and debugging practices.
Drive reliability improvements.
Establish strong engineering operational processes.
Create feedback loops that improve delivery quality over time.
What Success Looks Like:
Within 3 Months
Build strong relationships with customers and engineering teams.
Understand the Blue Machines platform and deployment patterns.
Contribute meaningfully to customer solution design.
Establish credibility as a technical leader.
Within 6 Months:
Successfully lead multiple customer deployments.
Improve engineering quality and delivery predictability.
Help scale FDE processes and practices.
Mentor engineers through complex customer implementations.
Within 12 Months:
Become a trusted leader for customers and internal teams.
Scale the FDE organisation while maintaining engineering quality.
Drive strategic customer deployments.
Help define how AI Employees are deployed across industries.
Requirements:
8+ years of software engineering experience.
2+ years of engineering management or technical leadership experience.
Strong hands-on engineering background.
Experience designing and operating production systems.
Strong system design and architecture skills.
Strong debugging and troubleshooting capability.
Experience leading engineers through complex technical projects.
Excellent communication skills.
Strongly Preferred:
Experience in one or more of: AI Agents, LLM Applications, Voice AI, Conversational AI, Contact Centre Technologies, Workflow Automation, Enterprise SaaS Platforms, Customer-Facing Engineering, Solutions Engineering, Distributed Systems.

Experience
5-9 yrs