Development Manager, Forward Deployed Engineering

Clio; Toronto; Hybrid; CAD 181,000 - 271,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid work environment

20 days off per year

Health, dental, vision insurance

RRSP matching

Counseling benefit

Job summary

Clio, the global leader in legal AI technology, seeks a Manager, Forward Deployed Engineering to lead a highly technical team embedding with enterprise clients and shipping end-to-end software. You will shape roadmaps, guide production-grade solutions, and drive direct client impact across Clio’s platform.

Based near Toronto or NYC, you’ll be in the office twice weekly on Anchor Days and occasionally travel to client sites to strengthen relationships and delivery.

Qualifications

• Demonstrated success leading software teams, especially for large SaaS products.
• Hands-on software development background with strong full-stack fundamentals.
• Experience shipping production-grade applications and working with enterprise clients.
• Experience with LLM-powered applications and AI integration for complex environments.
• Ability to scope problems with clients and translate feedback into technical outcomes.

Responsibilities

• Embed with enterprise clients to map workflows and define metrics.
• Design technical solutions with AI workflows and integrations using Clio APIs.
• Contribute to projects through code reviews or shipping features.
• Troubleshoot deployments with client technical teams in real time.
• Translate R&D into production-grade code and platform features.
• Provide constructive feedback on reviews and architecture.
• Collaborate with Product/Engineering to define roadmaps and opportunities.
• Hold 1:1s to support career growth and development.
• Participate in hiring to grow the Forward Deployed Engineering team.

Skills

People leadership

Full-stack development

RESTful APIs

LLM-powered apps

Client-facing

Hiring & coaching

Roadmaps

AI in legal

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS or related field

Tools

Ruby on Rails

Python

Clio APIs

Job description

Clio is the global leader in legal AI technology, empowering legal professionals and law firms of every size to work smarter, faster, and more securely.

As a Manager, Forward Deployed Engineering, you'll lead the team that turns the legal industry's most complex challenges into working software – embedding with our most demanding clients, moving from prototype to production quickly, and feeding what you learn back into our platform and roadmap. This isn't a support role or a solutions role with some coding on the side: our Forward Deployed Engineers design and build end-to-end and ship production-grade code that real lawyers rely on, and the best ideas your team surfaces in the field will graduate into product features for all of Clio's users.

At Clio we strive to be both human and high performing. For managers this means supporting and growing your people, strong execution as a team and alongside our clients, and building solid technical solutions. Our managers are highly technical and hands on, often coding, designing and reviewing alongside their team. They coach and build their teams to be both strong technically and strong team members. Every people manager at Clio is expected to lead with context, set the pace, and own the outcome - giving their team the clarity to move fast, the authority to decide, and the accountability to deliver.

This role is only open to candidates based near our Toronto or New York City hubs, requiring a presence in office twice a week on one of our Anchor Days.

Note: This role involves occasional travel to client sites to foster strong relationships and provide hands-on support.

What You'll Work On

• Embed with enterprise clients alongside your team to map out workflows, define clear success metrics, and de-risk constraints before writing a line of code.
• Working with your team on designing the technical solutions – custom AI workflows and integrations that slot into complex client environments using Clio APIs and the broader modern stack.
• Actively participating as a contributor to the project, either through extensive code reviews, or shipping code – designing, prototyping, and productionizing alongside your team.
• Work directly with client technical teams to troubleshoot, debug, and optimize deployments in real-time.
• Translate experimental R&D into stable, production-grade code – the kind that eventually becomes a platform feature for every Clio user – and hold your team to that bar.
• Giving great feedback on code reviews, architecture documents, and more to help support team members making great technical decisions for their projects.
• Collaborating with Product and Engineering partners to: understand the challenges our clients face, surface recurring patterns from the field, identify the most impactful opportunities, and craft a roadmap for the team.
• Having a 1:1 meeting with your direct reports to make sure they are supported in their career growth and development goals.
• Actively participating in hiring to grow the Forward Deployed Engineering team at Clio.

What You May Have

• Demonstrated success in people leadership in software development, particularly with large scale SaaS products.
• A strong background in hands-on software development, with strong full-stack fundamentals and deep comfort with RESTful APIs and systems integrations.
• Demonstrated ability to design, build and deploy production applications.
• Hands-on experience building LLM-powered applications – retrieval, agents, structured outputs, prompt safety – and taking them through to production.
• Experience working directly with clients or customers: scoping ambiguous problems, communicating trade-offs, and iterating based on real-world feedback.
• Demonstrated ability to hire the best and brightest engineers in a fast-paced job market—and to coach, develop, and retain engineering talent; You are equally energized by both your own technical work as well as contributing to the career growth of your team.
• You have strong opinions that are weakly held, and foster that same attitude in others.
• You believe in providing honest, actionable feedback to your team, and encourage your team to reciprocate.
• You devise roadmaps to guide your team, but aren't beholden to them -- you easily adapt to a constantly changing world.
• A genuine curiosity about AI and how it applies to the legal industry – you're not just using AI tools, you're thinking about how they change what's possible.

Serious bonus points if you have:

• A philosophy on what makes for great forward deployed engineering teams.
• Experience leading client-facing engineering teams.
• Experience with Ruby on Rails or Python.

Clio is the global leader in legal AI technology, empowering legal professionals and law firms of every size to work smarter, faster, and more securely.

We are transforming the legal experience for all by bettering the lives of legal professionals while increasing access to justice .

Summary:

As a Manager, Forward Deployed Engineering, you'll lead the team that turns the legal industry's most complex challenges into working software – embedding with our most demanding clients, moving from prototype to production quickly, and feeding what you learn back into our platform and roadmap. This isn't a support role or a solutions role with some coding on the side: our Forward Deployed Engineers design and build end-to-end and ship production-grade code that real lawyers rely on, and the best ideas your team surfaces in the field will graduate into product features for all of Clio's users.

At Clio we strive to be both human and high performing. For managers this means supporting and growing your people, strong execution as a team and alongside our clients, and building solid technical solutions. Our managers are highly technical and hands on, often coding, designing and reviewing alongside their team. They coach and build their teams to be both strong technically and strong team members. Every people manager at Clio is expected to lead with context, set the pace, and own the outcome - giving their team the clarity to move fast, the authority to decide, and the accountability to deliver.

This role is only open to candidates based near our Toronto or New York City hubs, requiring a presence in office twice a week on one of our Anchor Days.

Note: This role involves occasional travel to client sites to foster strong relationships and provide hands-on support.

What You'll Work On

• Embed with enterprise clients alongside your team to map out workflows, define clear success metrics, and de-risk constraints before writing a line of code.
• Working with your team on designing the technical solutions – custom AI workflows and integrations that slot into complex client environments using Clio APIs and the broader modern stack.
• Actively participating as a contributor to the project, either through extensive code reviews, or shipping code – designing, prototyping, and productionizing alongside your team.
• Work directly with client technical teams to troubleshoot, debug, and optimize deployments in real-time.
• Translate experimental R&D into stable, production-grade code – the kind that eventually becomes a platform feature for every Clio user – and hold your team to that bar.
• Giving great feedback on code reviews, architecture documents, and more to help support team members making great technical decisions for their projects.
• Collaborating with Product and Engineering partners to: understand the challenges our clients face, surface recurring patterns from the field, identify the most impactful opportunities, and craft a roadmap for the team.
• Having a 1:1 meeting with your direct reports to make sure they are supported in their career growth and development goals.
• Actively participating in hiring to grow the Forward Deployed Engineering team at Clio.

What You May Have

• Demonstrated success in people leadership in software development, particularly with large scale SaaS products.
• A strong background in hands-on software development, with strong full-stack fundamentals and deep comfort with RESTful APIs and systems integrations.
• Demonstrated ability to design, build and deploy production applications.
• Hands-on experience building LLM-powered applications – retrieval, agents, structured outputs, prompt safety – and taking them through to production.
• Experience working directly with clients or customers: scoping ambiguous problems, communicating trade-offs, and iterating based on real-world feedback.
• Demonstrated ability to hire the best and brightest engineers in a fast-paced job market—and to coach, develop, and retain engineering talent; You are equally energized by both your own technical work as well as contributing to the career growth of your team.
• You have strong opinions that are weakly held, and foster that same attitude in others.
• You believe in providing honest, actionable feedback to your team, and encourage your team to reciprocate.
• You devise roadmaps to guide your team, but aren't beholden to them -- you easily adapt to a constantly changing world.
• A genuine curiosity about AI and how it applies to the legal industry – you're not just using AI tools, you're thinking about how they change what's possible.

Serious bonus points if you have:

• A philosophy on what makes for great forward deployed engineering teams.
• Experience leading client-facing engineering teams.
• Experience with Ruby on Rails or Python.

This role is a backfill for an existing position.

What you will find here:

Compensation is one of the main components of Clio’s Total Rewards Program. We have developed a series of programs and processes to ensure we are creating fair and competitive pay practices that form the foundation of our human and high-performing culture.

Some highlights of our Total Rewards program include:

• Competitive, equitable salary with top-tier health benefits, dental, and vision insurance
• Hybrid work environment, with expectation for local Clions to be in office minimum twice per week. ( Find your Hub )
• Flexible time off policy, with an encouraged 20 days off per year.
• $2000 annual counseling benefit
• RRSP matching and RESP contribution
• Clioversary recognition program with special acknowledgement at 3, 5, 7, and 10 years

The expected salary range for this role is $180,500 to $270,700 CAD. Initial placement within the range is informed by geographic region, experience, and skillset, with room to progress as impact and tenure grow. Final offer amounts will vary based on candidate profile.

Diversity, Inclusion, Belonging and Equity (DIBE) & Accessibility

Our team shows up as their authentic selves, and are united by our mission. We are dedicated to diversity, equity and inclusion . We pride ourselves in building and fostering an environment where our teams feel included, valued, and enabled to do the best work of their careers, wherever they choose to log in from. We believe that different perspectives, skills, backgrounds, and experiences result in higher-performing teams and better innovation. We are committed to equal employment and we encourage candidates from all backgrounds to apply.

Clio provides accessibility accommodations during the recruitment process. Should you require any accommodation, please let us know and we will work with you to meet your needs.

Learn more about our culture at clio.com/careers

We're a Human and High Performing AI company, meaning we use artificial intelligence to improve all of our operations. In recruitment, AI helps us streamline the process for greater efficiency. However, we've built our systems to ensure that a human always reviews AI-generated output, and we never make automated hiring decisions.

Disclaimer: We only communicate with candidates through official @clio.com email addresses.