Director, Forward-Deployed Eng: ML Pilot Leader

Chalk; New York, Northern (NY, KY); Hybrid; USD 190,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Chalk is seeking a seasoned Forward Deployed Engineer leader in New York/San Francisco to own strategy, hiring, and the expansion of Chalk's customer-facing engineering function. You will work with founders to define how Chalk engages with customers from pre-sales pilots through onboarding, support, and expansion.

You'll stay hands-on with customer architectures while shaping the FDE team's processes, playbooks, and roadmap.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of engineering experience with 3+ years leading customer-facing engineering teams (forward deployed, solutions architecture, field engineering, or similar)
• Strong hands-on technical skills in Python and SQL, comfortable with customer architectures and data infrastructure
• Experience across pre-sales and post-sales complex enterprise motions: pilots, evaluations, onboarding, support, and expansion

Responsibilities

• Lead, develop, and retain Chalk's Forward Deployed Engineers across New York and San Francisco; own hiring plan
• Define strategy and operating model for the FDE function, including engagement models and account coverage
• Own the systems that keep the team running: triage, rotations, escalation paths, onboarding, and rollout processes
• Partner with Sales and GTM on technical pilots, evaluations, and deals
• Channel customer learnings into the product roadmap and tooling; stay hands-on with architectures
• Serve as executive-level technical counterpart to customer leadership at major accounts
• Define career paths and growth trajectories for FDEs as the function scales

Skills

Python

SQL

Leadership

Executive communication

Customer facing

Pre-sales / post-sales

Data infrastructure

Hiring

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or equivalent

Job description

Chalk is seeking a seasoned Forward Deployed Engineer leader in New York/San Francisco to own strategy, hiring, and the expansion of Chalk's customer-facing engineering function. You will work with founders to define how Chalk engages with customers from pre-sales pilots through onboarding, support, and expansion.

You'll stay hands-on with customer architectures while shaping the FDE team's processes, playbooks, and roadmap.