Sr. Engineering Manager

Blue Machines AI; Delhi; On-site; INR 4,500,000 - 7,500,000; Full time

Job summary

Blue Machines AI seeks a hands-on leader to head the Forward Deployed Engineering team. You will work directly with enterprise customers to translate business needs into scalable AI-powered workflows and lead multiple deployments from design to production.

The role requires strong technical judgment, ownership, and the ability to coach engineers while driving delivery, accountability, and measurable business value for customers.

Qualifications

• Experience leading cross-functional teams in enterprise deployments.
• Ability to translate business requirements into technical solutions.
• Strong judgment in production and reliability.
• Experience with hiring and building high-performance teams.

Responsibilities

• Lead the Forward Deployed Engineering team across deployments.
• Balance customer commitments with engineering capacity.
• Review production code and perform architecture reviews.
• Guide engineers through ambiguity and complex problems.
• Drive execution and ensure measurable outcomes for customers.

Skills

Leadership

Solution architecture

Customer discussions

Team mentoring

Deployment delivery

Hiring & recruitment

Job description

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
• Team leadership

No two customer deployments look the same. Success in this role requires strong technical judgment, adaptability, and ownership.

The candidate will have responsibilities across the following functions:

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.