Director, AI Platform & Field Engineering

Vibehackers; Northern (KY); Hybrid; USD 271,000 - 310,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical insurance

Dental insurance

Vision insurance

401(k) match

Parental leave

Remote work reimbursement

Disability insurance

Life insurance

Career growth

International teams

Job summary

Nebius seeks a Director of Forward Deployed Engineering to build and scale a world-class FDE organization that helps enterprise AI teams succeed on Nebius’s AI cloud platform. The role combines leadership, platform architecture, and partner strategy to convert field learnings into reusable platform assets.

You will recruit exceptional FDEs, establish operating models, and ensure technical excellence while engaging founders and senior technologists across partners and customers.

Qualifications

• 12–18+ years in engineering, solutions architecture, customer engineering, field engineering, or forward deployed engineering.
• 3–7+ years leading technical field organizations, including building a new function or scaling an existing team.
• Proven track record hiring, coaching, and scaling FDE, Solutions Architecture, or Field CTO teams.
• Technical judgment to review and elevate architectures across AI applications, inference, infrastructure, and data platforms.
• Proven ability to convert customer and partner feedback into shipped platform improvements.
• Executive presence and credibility as trusted advisor to founders and enterprise leaders.

Responsibilities

• Hire, develop, and grow a Forward Deployed Engineering organization across AI applications, inference, infrastructure, and data.
• Define talent bars, team structure, career paths, and leadership expectations.
• Coach engineers and managers to increase independence while maintaining high technical standards.
• Design scalable operating models for partner engagement, scoping, architecture reviews, escalation, and delivery health.
• Set the technical bar for integrations, proofs of concept, reference architectures, and partner assessments.
• Review and elevate architectures across AI applications, managed inference, cloud infrastructure, and data platforms.
• Represent FDE with founders, CTOs, and senior leaders as Nebius’s senior FDE representative.
• Build relationships across AI platforms, cloud providers, ISVs, open-source communities, and strategic partners.
• Represent FDE in platform planning, ecosystem strategy, and executive investment decisions.
• Create external technical presence through workshops, reference architectures, open source work, events, and developer advocacy.
• Treat partner engagements as continuous product discovery and convert field learning into roadmap priorities.
• Ensure engagements produce reusable value: platform capabilities, reference architectures, tooling, documentation, or automation.
• Prevent one-off consulting by setting boundaries and rewarding reusable outcomes.
• Collaborate with Product and Engineering to close feedback loops and improve customer experience.

Skills

Engineering leadership

Organization building

Talent development

Hiring & coaching

Technical judgment

Architecture review

Partner engagement

Executive presence

Strategic thinking

Cross-functional collaboration

Job description

Nebius seeks a Director of Forward Deployed Engineering to build and scale a world-class FDE organization that helps enterprise AI teams succeed on Nebius’s AI cloud platform. The role combines leadership, platform architecture, and partner strategy to convert field learnings into reusable platform assets.

You will recruit exceptional FDEs, establish operating models, and ensure technical excellence while engaging founders and senior technologists across partners and customers.