Director - Forward Deployed Engineering

GreyLabs AI; Mumbai; On-site; INR 2,500,000 - 3,500,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Strong investor backing

Inclusive workplace culture

Professional development opportunities

Job summary

GreyLabs AI is seeking a Director of Forward Deployed Engineering to build and scale its technical delivery organization. The role requires a combination of strong leadership and technical depth to enhance customer engagement and implement enterprise AI solutions across India’s BFSI ecosystem.

Successful candidates will have 10-15 years of experience in customer-facing roles, managing technical teams, and leading complex AI deployments. You will significantly influence the company's product evolution and operational scale.

Qualifications

• 10-15 years of experience in customer-facing technical organizations.
• 3-5+ years of experience managing technical teams.
• Proven experience building or scaling customer-facing technical functions.

Responsibilities

• Build GreyLabs AI’s Forward Deployed Engineering function.
• Oversee enterprise implementations across various clients.
• Act as executive sponsor for complex deployments.

Skills

Strong technical depth

Customer-facing leadership

Organizational building capability

Commercial judgement

Delivery rigor

Product intuition

High ownership

Education

Bachelor's degree in a relevant field

Tools

APIs

Webhooks

Authentication systems

Cloud infrastructure

Data pipelines

Enterprise architecture

Python proficiency

Job description

GreyLabs AI is building the voice operating system for India’s BFSI ecosystem. Our Agentic Voice AI platform helps banks, insurers, NBFCs, and fintechs automate and humanize millions of customer conversations across sales, collections, customer service, and compliance in multiple Indian languages.

In under two years, we’ve scaled to 75+ BFSI enterprise clients including RBL Bank, AU Small Finance Bank, IDFC FIRST Bank, SBI Life Insurance, ICICI Prudential Life Insurance, and Motilal Oswal Financial Services processing hundreds of millions of conversations. We recently raised ₹85 Crores in Series A funding led by Elevation Capital and Z47.

The Role

We’re hiring a Director – Forward Deployed Engineering to build and scale GreyLabs AI’s customer-facing technical delivery organization.

This is not a traditional implementation leadership role. This role sits at the intersection of Professional Services, Solutions Engineering, Customer Engineering, Product, and Delivery Operations.

You will own the end-to-end FDE function defining how enterprise AI deployments are executed, building and leading teams of FDEs and FDE Leads, creating scalable delivery systems, and acting as the senior technical escalation point for our most strategic customers.

The FDE organization at GreyLabs is responsible for translating enterprise business problems into production-grade AI deployments. This includes solutioning, integrations, workflow design, deployment architecture, production troubleshooting, optimization, and customer advisory across banking, insurance, and fintech environments.

You will work directly with CXOs, business leaders, engineering teams, operations heads, and product stakeholders at India’s largest BFSI institutions while simultaneously building the internal systems, talent, and operating model that allows the function to scale predictably.

One week you may be helping close a strategic enterprise deployment involving multi-system integrations and complex compliance workflows. The next, you may be redesigning the deployment lifecycle, reviewing escalations across accounts, coaching FDE Leads, or partnering with Product and Engineering to convert recurring implementation pain points into platform capabilities.

This role demands:

• Strong technical depth
• Customer-facing leadership
• Organizational building capability
• Commercial judgement
• Delivery rigor
• Product intuition
• High ownership

If you enjoy building high-performance technical organizations that operate close to customers and directly influence product evolution, this role was built for you.

What You’ll Do

Build & Scale the FDE Organization

• Build GreyLabs AI’s Forward Deployed Engineering function from the ground up
• Hire, mentor, and manage FDE Leads and FDEs across regions and enterprise accounts
• Define the org structure, career ladders, capability expectations, onboarding frameworks, and operating principles for the FDE organization
• Build a high-performance customer engineering culture balancing speed, technical excellence, and customer empathy
• Create systems that allow the function to scale without becoming process-heavy or bureaucratic

Own Enterprise AI Deployments

• Oversee strategic enterprise implementations across banking, insurance, NBFC, and fintech clients
• Act as executive sponsor and senior technical escalation point for complex deployments
• Ensure successful go-live and long-term adoption across enterprise customers
• Drive accountability for deployment quality, customer outcomes, production stability, and implementation timelines

Lead Solution Engineering & Technical Advisory

• Partner with Sales, Solutions, and Customer Success during pre-sales and deployment phases
• Guide customers on architecture, integrations, deployment approaches, workflow design, scalability, and operational readiness
• Participate in executive-level customer conversations involving CIOs, CTOs, Product Heads, Ops Leaders, and Digital Transformation teams
• Influence technical and business stakeholders during large enterprise engagements

Standardize Delivery & Professional Services

• Build repeatable deployment methodologies, implementation playbooks, governance models, and operational frameworks
• Integration frameworks
• Deployment templates
• AI workflow patterns
• Internal tooling
• Troubleshooting frameworks
• Improve time-to-go-live, deployment predictability, and operational scalability across the portfolio

Drive Product Feedback Loops

• Partner closely with Product and Engineering to convert field learnings into platform capabilities
• Identify recurring deployment bottlenecks, integration gaps, and workflow inefficiencies
• Influence platform roadmap based on customer deployment realities
• Ensure the voice of enterprise customers is reflected in product evolution

Stay Technically Credible

• Review complex solution architectures and enterprise integrations
• Guide teams on production debugging, system reliability, APIs, authentication flows, and deployment design
• Support high-priority escalations when required
• Stay close enough to the technology to make sound architectural and operational decisions

What We’re Looking For

Must-Haves

• 10-15 years of experience in customer-facing technical organizations such as- Forward Deployed Engineering, Solutions Engineering, Professional Services, Customer Engineering, Technical Consulting, Implementation Engineering
• 3-5+ years of experience managing technical teams and technical managers/leads
• Proven experience building or scaling customer-facing technical functions in SaaS or enterprise technology companies
• Strong technical understanding of APIs, Webhooks, Authentication systems, System integrations, Cloud infrastructure, Data pipelines, Enterprise architecture
• Strong Python proficiency and hands‑on engineering understanding
• Experience handling enterprise customers and executive stakeholders in high‑stakes environments
• Demonstrated ability to improve delivery scalability, implementation efficiency, and operational rigor
• Strong ownership mindset with accountability toward customer outcomes and business impact

Strong Signals

• You’ve built or scaled a Solutions Engineering, Professional Services, Customer Engineering, or FDE organization
• You’ve operated in fast-growing B2B SaaS environments deploying into enterprise customers
• You’ve managed technical delivery in regulated industries such as BFSI
• You’ve built repeatable implementation systems that reduced dependency on heroics
• You’ve handled customer escalations and converted difficult situations into stronger partnerships
• You’ve partnered closely with Product and Engineering to influence roadmap decisions
• You understand the balance between customization and platformization
• You enjoy operating in ambiguity and building functions from scratch

Nice to Have

• Exposure to Conversational AI, Voice AI, LLM systems, Contact Center platforms, or workflow automation
• Experience in BFSI technology ecosystems
• Familiarity with enterprise deployment governance, InfoSec processes, and compliance‑heavy environments
• Experience working with large‑scale AI deployments in production

What Success Looks Like

Within 12 months, you would have:

• Built a scalable FDE organization with strong hiring and leadership layers
• Reduced enterprise deployment timelines significantly
• Established standardized deployment and escalation frameworks
• Improved customer deployment quality and production stability
• Built strong cross‑functional alignment across Sales, Product, Engineering, Delivery, and Customer Success
• Created reusable deployment assets that improve delivery leverage across accounts
• Made the FDE organization a strategic differentiator for GreyLabs AI

Why Join GreyLabs AI

Build a Category-Defining Function

You won’t inherit a mature Professional Services organization you’ll architect and scale it. The systems, culture, and leadership model you build will define how GreyLabs deploys AI across enterprise India.

Operate at the Frontier of Enterprise AI

You’ll work on production AI systems handling millions of real-world customer conversations across India’s largest BFSI institutions.

This role combines:

• Technical leadership
• Org building
• Product influence
• Operational scale

Very few roles offer this breadth.

Strong Business Momentum

GreyLabs AI already has:

• Strong investor backing
• Experienced founders

The challenge now is scaling enterprise delivery with consistency and excellence and this role sits at the center of that journey.

We’re committed to creating a fair, respectful, and inclusive workplace. From hiring to growth opportunities, our decisions are based on merit, skills, and potential, never on gender, identity, background, or any other personal characteristic. Talent has no labels here, and everyone is welcome to grow and thrive with us.