Manager - Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE)

Spyne; Gurugram District; On-site; INR 4,000,000 - 7,000,000; Full time

Job summary

Spyne is seeking a Manager for Forward Deployed Engineering in Gurgaon, on-site, working US business hours. You will lead a team of FDEs, tackle the toughest escalations, and drive product improvements by triaging issues and shaping repeatable fixes.

You will own the team’s delivery, hire 5–10 engineers, review code, and influence queue management to meet SLAs. Requires 6–10 years of software experience and 2+ years of leadership. Strong English on-call communication is essential.

Qualifications

• 6 to 10 years of software engineering experience, at least 4 years shipping production code.
• 2+ years leading engineers, as a manager or tech lead.
• Accountability for customer issues in production: response times, incidents, and on-call rotations.

Responsibilities

• Fix the hardest escalations: dealer system integrations, agent behavior, data gaps, and handoffs between sales, service and F&I.
• Run the queue: manage response times, P0 and P1 incidents, and on-call across India and US hours.
• Make fixes safe and fast: establish access controls, review and rollback rules, and runbooks/AI tooling for triage.
• Own the team’s product work: allocate 20% of time to product initiatives and shepherd from spec to shipped with measurable impact.
• Build the team: hire 5 to 10 FDEs and mentor them as they progress to PM roles.

Skills

Team leadership

Production code

On-call experience

English communication

Job description

Manager - Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE)

Department: Customer Support / Forward Deployed Engineering

Experience: 6-10 Years

Employment Type: Full-Time

Timing: 6 PM - 03 AM (US Business Hours)

Location: On-site, Gurgaon, Haryana

About Spyne

Spyne is rebuilding the $12B+ automotive software stack from the ground up, giving dealers the AI-powered tools they need to sell more cars, faster. Founded by ex-Amazon, Cox, and OYO operators, Spyne has grown 30x in under three years and now serves 1,500+ dealerships across the US.

The company entered the market through Studio AI, a visual merchandising platform powered by 80+ proprietary AI models that transforms raw car photos into studio-quality images, 360-degree spins, and videos in minutes. Deeply integrated with 60+ dealer tools, from DMS and CRM platforms to major automotive marketplaces, Studio AI has become the trusted foundation inside dealer workflows nationwide.

Now, Spyne is breaking into a much larger opportunity with Vini AI, a conversational Voice AI agent that handles inbound and outbound calls, books test drives, follows up on leads, and manages service appointments 24/7 without human intervention. Vini bookings have grown 7x in six months, and dealers who add Vini on top of Studio see ACV expansions of 4-7x.

Together, the two products are converging into a full-stack Retail AI platform covering inventory management, digital retail, and customer relationship management.

Backed by Accel, Vertex Ventures, and Storm Ventures, Spyne is targeting $50M ARR by the end of 2026 and positioning itself to become the category-defining AI platform for the modern dealership.

The Role

Spyne builds AI for US car dealerships: we get their cars online faster and answer their sales and service calls. Our support team no longer just logs tickets. Our forward deployed engineers fix most dealer issues themselves, in production.

You lead that team and set how it works. You take the hardest issues yourself, and you decide which recurring problems become product, so they stop coming back.

What you'll do

• Fix the hardest escalations: dealer system integrations, agent behaviour, data gaps, and the handoffs between sales, service and F&I. Close the loop with the dealer and the CSM.
• Run the queue: a car not listed or a lead lost outranks a cosmetic bug. Keep response times, and run P0 and P1 incidents and on-call across India and US hours.
• Make fixes safe and fast: rules for access, review and rollback, plus runbooks and AI tooling for triage and diagnosis.
• Own the team’s product work: every FDE spends 20% of their time on a product initiative. You decide which recurring problems they take on, and coach them from spec to shipped, measured impact.
• Build the team: hire 5 to 10 FDEs, review their code, and keep the queue covered as FDEs move into PM roles.

How we'll judge it

• SLAs met, and time to fix P0 and P1 issues
• Issues closed without core Engineering
• Repeat issues eliminated each quarter
• FDE product initiatives shipped, and FDEs moved into PM roles

You'll do well here if you have

• 6 to 10 years of software engineering, 4+ of them shipping production code, and you still write it.
• 2+ years leading engineers, as a manager or tech lead.
• Been accountable for customer issues in production: response times, incidents, and being on call when something breaks at night.
• Comfort debugging production systems you didn’t write, under customer pressure.
• Clear written and spoken English. You'll be on calls with US dealers.

Nice to have

• Experience leading a customer-facing engineering team (FDE, solutions engineering, support engineering).
• Exposure to US auto retail, DMS/CRM integrations (CDK, Reynolds, Dealertrack, VinSolutions), or voice and chat agents.