Deployment Strategist

Found AI; Chicago (IL); Hybrid; USD 130,000 - 160,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical benefits (BCBSIL Blue PPO)

Dental 75% company‑paid

Vision coverage (voluntary)

Equity: Yes

Hybrid work model

Job summary

Found AI is seeking a Deployment Lead in Chicago to oversee engagements with multiple customers, driving workshops, adoption, and renewal decisions. You will partner with forward deployed engineers and an Operational Partner to capture workflow needs, define success metrics, and sign production orders.

You’ll manage scope, cadence, and budgets across deployments, ensure executive-level readouts, and steer the commercial terms from discovery through renewal in collaboration with clients and Found

Qualifications

• Defined a messy business problem with operators or executives and drove to measurable results (must-have).
• Managed several customer projects simultaneously with scope, cadence, and follow-through (must-have).
• Led working sessions with senior stakeholders to stay on track (must-have).
• Handled commercial threads: scoped terms, buyer mapping, and renewal to signature (must-have).
• Communicated deployment status clearly, even when off track (must-have).
• Experience deploying to industrial operators or executives is a plus (nice-to-have).

Responsibilities

• Scope, plan, and cadence on every deployment: define the metric, baseline, and plan.
• Own the commercial thread: MOU, data agreement, buyer map, budget path, conversion terms, and production order.
• Drive adoption: training, feedback loops, and changes that embed the tool into the job.
• Coordinate alignment from operators to executive sponsor and deliver readouts proving value.
• Lead renewal and expansion efforts, co-led with the forward deployed engineer.

Skills

Cross-functional collaboration

Multi-project management

Facilitation

Commercial acumen

Clear communication

Job description

About Found

Found AI is decision intelligence for industrial operations. We deploy Refinery to build a unified business ontology of a company’s enterprise data and decision logic, including the fragmented legacy data and undocumented decisions their operation runs on. That lets people and agents continuously execute the high‑value workflows that depend on many disparate inputs, driving speed, accuracy and measurable operational outcomes. On that foundation, our Forward Deployed Team, working side by side with our customers’ subject matter experts, deploys agents for the revenue, operational and capital decisions every manufacturer, materials company and logistics operator faces: quoting, scheduling, capacity planning, routing and dispatch, and capex. Everything runs in a secured environment and every decision is auditable.

Why this role exists

A deployment works when the system is technically right and the people it’s built for use it to make decisions. Engineers own the first. This seat owns the second: you run the engagement across two to four customers at once: the workshop, the plan, the commercial terms, and the adoption that makes what we deploy change the work. You’ll pair with a dedicated forward deployed engineer, who owns workflow capture and the build, and an Operational Partner on each customer.

What You’ll Deliver

First 90 days

• Run the workshop on a live deployment and agree the initial use case, the metric, and the plan with the customer.
• Stand up the tracker, the cadence, and the SME and executive check‑ins, and get a baseline the customer signs off on.
• Deliver a results readout to the customer’s executives, in their numbers.

First 12 months

• Operators run our workflows daily, with measured adoption.
• Every deployment converts to a signed production order and ends with the next use case scoped and on the calendar.
• A discovery and workshop method the rest of the team can run.

What You’ll Own

• Scope, plan, and cadence on every deployment you’re on: the metric, the decision, the baseline.
• The commercial thread: MOU and data agreement, buyer map, budget path, conversion terms, and the production order form.
• Adoption: training, feedback loops, and the changes that make the tool part of the job.
• Alignment from front‑line operators to the executive sponsor.
• Readouts that prove value delivered and earn the next commitment.
• Renewal and expansion, co‑led with the forward deployed engineer.

What We’re Looking For

Must-haves

• You’ve worked with operators or executives to define a messy business problem and drive it to a measurable result.
• You have run several customer projects at once: scope, plan, cadence, and follow-through, with nothing dropped.
• You’ve led working sessions and kept a room of senior people on track.
• You’ve worked a commercial thread: scoped terms, mapped the buyer, and moved a deal or renewal to signature.
• You tell customers where a deployment actually stands, including when it’s off track.

Nice-to-haves

• Deployment strategy, technical account management, implementation, or consulting work in industrial companies.
• Rolling out new tools to front‑line teams.
• Fluency with data, APIs, and integrations (hands‑on SQL or spreadsheet modeling is a plus), and exposure to AI products.

Our Values

We hire against our values that are rooted in Trust. In your work and in conversation, this looks like:

• Trust: is earned and acts as the Foundation of every interaction.
• Childlike Curiosity: you learn perpetually, ask why, and meet the world with wonder.
• Abundance Mentality: you expand through collaboration and optimism. The only limits are the ones you accept.
• Proactive Autonomy: you think independently and take initiative without waiting for permission.
• Execute Relentlessly: you move with urgency and discipline, turning ideas into outcomes through obstacles.
• Intellectual Honesty: you pursue truth over ego, challenge ideas rigorously, and adapt to new evidence.
• Collective Accountability: you share responsibility for the quality and impact of what we build together.

Logistics

• Location: Chicago, hybrid. 25% to 50% travel to customer sites, heaviest around workshops and executive readouts.
• Reports to: Deployment Lead
• Experience: 3+ years in consulting, operations, or customer‑facing strategy roles
• Compensation: $130K–$160K base
• Equity: Yes.
• Benefits: Medical (BCBSIL Blue PPO, 90% company‑paid), dental (75% company‑paid), and voluntary vision coverage.
• Type: Full‑time

Found AI is an equal opportunity employer. We hire on evidence of the work and the values above, not pedigree. If you read the must‑haves and you’re close but not a perfect match, apply anyway and tell us why you’d be good at this. The calibration above means we’d rather assess than screen you out. We’ll provide reasonable accommodation in the hiring process on request.