Director, Forward Deployed Engineering

C3 AI; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 180,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive compensation

Generous equity plan

Job summary

C3 AI in Chicago seeks a Director of Forward Deployed Engineering to own a portfolio of strategic customer relationships from signature to production and expansion, leading a team of engineers who deliver complex enterprise AI deployments. You will set executive-level roadmaps, manage scope, and run C-suite briefings while ensuring delivery milestones and risk management.

This role requires deep enterprise software experience, strong leadership, and the ability to build trust with customers and

Qualifications

• 10+ years in management consulting or FDE/delivery leadership for enterprise software or professional services
• Experience leading multi-workstream delivery for Fortune 500 or large public-sector clients
• Executive presence with experience running C-suite briefings and guiding scope/priorities
• Direct experience with AI agent deployment, LLM-based systems, or enterprise AI platforms in production
• Comfortable with code and reading technical design documents to scope work

Responsibilities

• Own delivery outcomes across a portfolio of strategic accounts from signed SOW to production and expansion
• Set engagement structure (scope, milestones, dependencies, value hypotheses) and enforce scope discipline
• Run executive briefings and steering committee updates for accounts at the C-suite level
• Own escalation management and drive engagements back to green when at risk
• Manage a team of Forward Deployed resources including hiring, onboarding, and career development
• Allocate staffing based on priority, risk, and growth stage, with flexible reallocation as needed
• Coach FDTLs and FDEs on running accounts with rigor and maintaining delivery quality
• Lead headcount planning and build a bench strong enough to weather attrition
• Conduct technical discovery and map customer workflows to define MVP scope for new use cases
• Translate business objectives into sequenced technical roadmaps for execution
• Hold architecture discussions to evaluate trade-offs and mitigate scope/feasibility risks
• Hands-on when necessary to validate data models or integrations

Skills

Executive leadership

Delivery leadership

Client relationship management

AI/enterprise software

Strategic planning

Education

BS/MS in Computer Science or related

Job description

C3 AI (NYSE: AI), is the Enterprise AI application software company. C3 AI delivers a family of fully integrated products including the C3 Agentic AI Platform, an end-to-end platform for developing, deploying, and operating enterprise AI applications, C3 AI applications, a portfolio of industry-specific SaaS enterprise AI applications that enable the digital transformation of organizations globally, and C3 Generative AI, a suite of domain-specific generative AI offerings for the enterprise.Learn more at: C3 AI

C3 AI's Forward Deployed Engineering organization sits inside some of the world's largest and most complex enterprises, turning signed contracts intoproductionAI systems that change how those businessesoperate. As Director, you will own a portfolio of our most strategic customer relationships end to end, from signature through production and into expansion, and you will lead the team of engineers who make that delivery happen.

You will be two things at once: the executive the customer trusts to tell them the truth about their program, and theleaderyour team trusts to give them clear direction, real support, and room to grow. You set the technical and commercial roadmap for each engagement in your portfolio, run the relationship at the C-suite level, and build, staff, and develop the team of engineers executing against that roadmap.

This is a role for someone who has run high-stakes client relationships, whether in top-tier consulting, enterprise software delivery, or technical program leadership, and who is ready to build and lead a team rather than sit inside a single account. You willoperateat the executive table with the customer, go deep enough technically to catch a bad scope or a wrong estimate before it becomes a delivery risk, and build a team capable of delivering without you in the room.

Responsibilities

Portfolio leadership and delivery

• Own delivery outcomes across a portfolio of strategic accounts, from signed SOW through production go-live and into expansion, coordinating Forward Deployed Engineers (FDEs), Forward Deployed Team Leads (FDTLs), Presales, and customer stakeholders against a single delivery plan per engagement.
• Set engagement structure across your portfolio — scope, milestones, dependencies, and value hypotheses — and hold the line on scope discipline as customer priorities shift.
• Run executive briefings and steering committee updates across accounts, translating delivery status and technical trade-offs into language a C-suite sponsor acts on.
• Own escalation management across your portfolio; when an engagement is at risk, you are the first call and the person who drives it back to green.

People management and team leadership

• Manage a team of Forward Deployed resources across your portfolio, including hiring, onboarding, performance management, and career development.
• Allocate staffing across accounts based on account priority, risk, and growth stage, and reallocate quickly when an engagement's needs change.
• Set the technical and delivery bar for your team, and coach FDTLs and FDEs on how to run their own accounts with the same rigor you apply to yours.
• Own headcount planning for your portfolio: build the case for new roles, identify underperformance early, and manage out where needed.
• Create a bench strong enough that losing any single person does not put an account at risk.

Technical fluency and scoping

• Lead or oversee technical discovery across your portfolio, mapping customer workflows, identifying data and integration constraints, and defining MVP scope for new use cases.
• Translate customer business objectives into sequenced technical roadmaps that FDEs and FDTLs execute against.
• Hold architecture conversations with customer and internal engineering stakeholders credibly enough to evaluate trade-offs and catch scope or feasibility problems before they become delivery risk.
• Get hands‑on when it matters — pressure-test a data model, sketch an integration approach, or validate a data assumption yourself when it's faster than waiting on someone else.

Use case adoption and expansion

• Identifythe highest-value use cases across your portfolio and build the business case for each, including baseline metrics, target outcomes, and ROImeasurement.
• Drive pilot-to-production conversion by removing organizational and technical blockers that stall adoption after a use case proves out technically.
• Build the executive relationships that surface the next use case before the customer asks for it, turning single-workflow engagements into multi-year account growth.
• Partner with Sales and Presales to shape expansion opportunities using direct field insight into where customer problems and appetite sit.

Playbooks and organizational contribution

• Codify what works across your portfolio into reusable patterns — scoping templates, value measurement frameworks, staffing models, and stakeholder playbooks — that other Directors and FDTLs can use.
• Feed field signal back into Product and Solutions on where the platform and base applications fall short of what customers actually need.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience in management consulting or FDE/delivery leadership, with meaningful time in enterprise software, professional services, or technical consulting; consulting leadership experience at the Associate Partner/Principal level (McKinsey, BCG, Bain, or equivalent) is strongly preferred.
• BS/MS in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.
• Prior people management experience — hiring, developing, and performance-managing a team, not just leading a workstream.
• A track record owning complex, multi-workstream delivery for Fortune 500 or large public-sector clients across multiple simultaneous engagements, with direct accountability for outcomes, not just process.
• Direct experience with AI agent deployment, LLM-based systems, or enterprise AI platforms in production, with enough technical fluency to understand data architecture, integration patterns, and agentic system concepts well enough to scope work and evaluate trade-offs.
• Comfortable enough with code to read a pull request, leverage agentic tools to write code, or follow a technical design doc without translation.
• Executive presence: comfortable running C-suite briefings, navigating enterprise politics, and holding firm on scope and priorities under pressure from a sponsor.
• High agency and comfort with ambiguity, including managing a team through it.
• Demonstrated ability to build trust with both a customer's business stakeholders and their technical teams simultaneously, and to build that same trust with a team you manage.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in a key industry vertical such as advanced manufacturing, energy, heavy industrial, CPG, agriculture, defense, or public sector.
• Prior experience in a forward-deployed, embedded delivery model at another enterprise software or AI platform vendor with a professional‑services or forward‑deployed motion.
• Experience building or scaling a delivery function or team, not just operating within one.

Candidates must be authorized to work in the United States without the need for current or future company sponsorship .

C3 AI provides excellent benefits, a competitive compensation package and generous equity plan.

$180,000 — $230,000 USD

C3 AI is proud to be an Equal Opportunity and Aff…