Customer Engineering Lead

Auger Inc.; Dallas, Northern (TX, KY); Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Auger Inc. is seeking a leader to own the technical launch plan, defining data access architecture and guiding an engineering pod through go-live. You will coordinate data sources, testing, and cutover with a customer IT organization, balancing architecture and delivery risk.

The role requires 5+ years in engineering, TPM, or engineering management, with strong communication and a proven ability to drive hard launch dates across cross-functional teams while traveling up to 50% of the time.

Qualifications

• 5+ years across engineering, technical program management, or engineering management.
• Track record delivering complex technical programs for enterprise customers across multiple teams you did not manage.
• Fluency in enterprise data and systems integration: APIs, ETL and streaming pipelines, cloud infrastructure, and enterprise systems such as ERP, WMS, or TMS.
• Ability to read production code, evaluate technical designs, and hold your own with senior engineers.
• Experience owning a hard launch date across cross-functional teams and an external customer IT organization, including cutover and post-launch support.
• Direct, written communication: plans, decisions, risks, and status that leave no room for interpretation.
• Ability to travel 25-50% of the time.

Responsibilities

• Own the technical launch plan: build and defend end-to-end engineering schedule with dependencies, owners, dates, and contingency.
• Define data needs and access architecture with customer IT teams.
• Direct the engineering pod: manage rotating engineers, data engineers, and QA across the account.
• Resolve ambiguity with Product to ensure feasible requirements.
• Oversee end-to-end testing: internal, customer, and platform validation before go-live.
• Drive go/no-go, cutover, escalation and post-launch support.
• Translate between customer IT and Auger engineering as the single technical voice.
• Make hard technical tradeoffs with clear costs and benefits.
• Maintain close attention to detail: review code, designs, and data integrity.
• Close loop with Product and Engineering to improve future launches.

Skills

Technical program management

Engineering management

Software engineering

Data engineering

Job description

About the Role

Auger becomes real to a customer on one day: when it goes live in their environment, runs on their data, and starts executing decisions autonomously. Getting it to that day is your job.

You own the technical path from signed scope-of-work to go-live: the data sources and access architecture, the integration, the write-back, the testing, the go/no-go call, and the cutover. You work inside a Customer Transformation pod alongside the Customer Transformation Lead, the Product Lead, and the Supply Chain Data Scientist. You are the engineering voice in that room and the connective tissue between the customer's IT and data organization and Auger's engineers who are building for them.

Engineers, data engineers, and QA join the account for the length of the engagement, and the roster changes with each one, so you end up working across most of Auger engineering and knowing exactly who to pull in when something has to move today. You will be context switching across multiple projects getting delivered for the customer, each with its own timeline, blockers, and stakeholders, and the ground will shift under you regularly. The job is absorbing that volatility without losing the thread on any single project.

This is a hybrid of technical program management and engineering management. You are technical enough to read the code, challenge an architecture, and know when an estimate is fiction. You are operational enough to hold a launch date across several internal teams and a customer IT organization that has never moved this fast.

The people who thrive here are decisive under ambiguity, comfortable moving from an architecture review to an executive escalation in the same afternoon, and constitutionally unable to let a blocker sit for a week. They do not forward problems. They bring the problem, the options, and the call they are making.

What You'll Do

• Own the technical launch plan. Build and defend the end-to-end engineering schedule for each deployment: dependencies, owners, dates, and what happens when someone misses. Once finalized, track the progress made by the team against the plan.
• Define what data we need and how we get it. Run the context and data inventory process, identify every required source, and drive read access architecture design with the customer's data and IT teams.
• Direct the engineering pod. Lead a rotating set of dotted-line engineers, data engineers, and QA across the account. Assign the work, set the bar, unblock daily, and step in when a workstream slips.
• When a requirement is unclear or in tension with what's technically achievable, work it through with Product until it's resolved — don't let ambiguity reach engineers mid-execution
• Surface concerns the moment you see them before its undeniable — a number that doesn't add up, a decision drifting from what was agreed, a risk no one's naming yet.Own testing end to end. Internal dogfooding, Auger testing, and joint customer testing. Find the failures that would surface at go-live while there is still time to fix them.
• Drive go/no-go, cutover, escalation. Make the launch call on evidence, run the cutover with the customer's tech team, and own technical escalation and SLA support after.
• Translate between customer IT and Auger engineering. Serve as the single technical voice to the customer's data, IT, and security organizations. Turn their systems reality into requirements our engineers can build from without a follow-up meeting.
• Force technical tradeoffs to a decision. Scope, sequencing, build versus configure, what ships at launch and what does not. Make the call, state the cost, and move.
• Stay in the detail. Read the code, review the designs, inspect the data, validate the integration yourself. You do not accept status as evidence.
• Close the loop with Product and Engineering. Feed recurring customer friction back into the platform so the next launch is faster than this one.

What You'll Bring

• 5+ years across engineering, technical program management, or engineering management, including hands-on software or data engineering experience.
• Track record delivering complex technical programs for enterprise customers across multiple teams you did not manage.
• Fluency in enterprise data and systems integration: APIs, ETL and streaming pipelines, cloud infrastructure, and enterprise systems such as ERP, WMS, or TMS.
• Ability to read production code, evaluate technical designs, and hold your own with senior engineers.
• Experience owning a hard launch date across cross-functional teams and an external customer IT organization, including cutover and post-launch support.
• Direct, written communication: plans, decisions, risks, and status that leave no room for interpretation.
• Ability to travel 25-50% of the time.