Director, Forward Deployed Engineering

Socket.dev; New York (NY); Hybrid; USD 225,000 - 275,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

25 days vacation

Free lunch in the office

One Medical Membership

Citi Bike memberships

Monthly wellness stipend

Paid parental leave

Reproductive Health Benefits

Learning & Development budget

Job summary

Viam is seeking a Director of Forward Deployed Engineering to lead a five-person team responsible for deploying our robotics software solutions to strategic enterprise accounts. This leadership role blends technical decision-making with customer-facing collaboration to ensure successful deployments.

The ideal candidate balances architectural judgment, coaching, and direct interactions with customer leadership, while staying fluent with hardware and new platform adoption. Hybrid NYC-based role.

Qualifications

• Experience managing engineers who deploy software in customer environments.
• Deep systems experience and the ability to get fluent in an unfamiliar platform quickly.
• Judgment across systems integration, SDKs, and edge/cloud architectures.
• Credibility to hold hard conversations with enterprise leadership.
• Ability to balance multiple customer urgencies with scalable portfolio.

Responsibilities

• Manage a team of five forward deployed engineers: coaching, performance, hiring, and how they are resourced across accounts.
• Own the technical approach across deployments and make the architecture and prioritization calls.
• Be the senior technical voice with customer leadership, from kickoff through escalation.
• Work with Viam leadership on account direction, and keep them current on progress, risks, and blockers.
• Drive deployments to production: hold the schedule, unblock what's stuck, and change approach when a site demands it.
• Turn field learnings into platform priorities with Product and Engineering.

Skills

Team leadership

Systems architecture

Customer engagement

Software deployments

Robotics/IoT familiarity

Job description

About Viam

Founded by Eliot Horowitz, co-founder and former CTO of MongoDB, Viam is a novel robotics engineering platform that lets you configure, control, and manage robots intuitively and quickly. We’re inspiring a generation of engineers to solve complicated automation problems with our uniquely powerful suite of software tools.

We’re a ~100-person company headquartered in New York City.

About the Role

Hybrid 3 days/week in NYC office, with occasional travel to customer sites

We're looking for a Director of Forward Deployed Engineering to lead the team responsible for getting Viam's customers into production. You'll manage a team of five engineers working across our most strategic accounts, own the technical approach to each deployment, and serve as the senior technical partner to our customers' engineering and operations leaders.

This is a leadership role for someone who is still technical. You'll spend your time on architecture decisions, design reviews, coaching, and customer conversations. Prior professional robotics experience isn't required, but you should be comfortable around hardware and physical systems, and able to get fluent in a new platform quickly.

What you’ll own:

• Manage a team of five forward deployed engineers: coaching, performance, hiring, and how they are resourced across accounts.
• Own the technical approach across deployments and make the architecture and prioritization calls.
• Be the senior technical voice with customer leadership, from kickoff through escalation.
• Work with Viam leadership on account direction, and keep them current on progress, risks, and blockers.
• Drive deployments to production: hold the schedule, unblock what's stuck, and change approach when a site demands it.
• Turn field learnings into platform priorities with Product and Engineering.

What you bring:

• Experience managing engineers who deploy software in customer environments.
• Deep systems experience and the ability to get fluent in an unfamiliar platform quickly. You can review a design and read code, though you won't be coding day to day.
• Judgment across systems integration, SDKs, and edge/cloud architectures, including what breaks when networks and hardware are unreliable.
• A track record with enterprise customers, including the credibility to hold a hard conversation with their leadership.
• Comfort deciding with incomplete information and owning the outcome.
• Experience building structure where none existed, in an environment where most of the work is still bespoke.
• Willingness to balance one customer's urgency against what scales across the portfolio.

Experience with robotics or IoT is not required.

The salary for this role is between $225,000 - $275,000 /year.

Full-time Benefits

Viam’s base salary range for this role is posted above. In addition to cash compensation, Viam offers a comprehensive Total Rewards package that includes equity grants, health benefits, and more.

• 100% covered medical/dental/vision insurance plans, commuter benefits
• 25 days paid vacation and generous holiday observances
• Free lunch every day that you’re in the office
• One Medical Membership
• Citi Bike memberships
• Monthly wellness stipend to be used for a variety of fitness-related items like gym memberships, fitness classes, fitness equipment, and more
• Paid parental leave
• Reproductive Health Benefits, including Fertility Benefits and Abortion Access Travel Benefits
• Yearly Learning and Development Budget for your own personal learning goals

Values:

• Vision Driven
• Collaborate Openly
• Act Decisively
• Succeed Through Diversity
• Hold Ourselves Accountable
• Lead with Curiosity