Director, Forward Deployed Engineering

Vibehackers

Northern (KY)

Hybrid

USD 271,000 - 310,000

Full time

14 days+

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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

Building core AI infrastructure and developer-facing platform work — closely tied to AI dev tooling, inference and GPU orchestration rather than UI prototyping.

About the Role

Nebius is hiring a Director of Forward Deployed Engineering to build and scale a world-class FDE organization that helps enterprise AI teams succeed on their AI cloud platform. The role combines engineering leadership, platform architecture, ecosystem partnerships, and product strategy to convert partner engagements into reusable platform improvements.

Job Description

Role

Nebius seeks a Director of Forward Deployed Engineering to build and scale the organization that ensures customers and partners are successful on Nebius’s AI cloud platform. This role sits at the intersection of engineering leadership, platform architecture, ecosystem partnerships, and product strategy and is focused on recruiting exceptional FDEs, establishing operating models, ensuring technical excellence, and converting field engagements into reusable platform assets.

Key Responsibilities

Organization Building & Talent

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 leadership and organizational systems that scale without reliance on individual heroics.

Operating Model & Technical Excellence

Establish 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.
Balance speed with engineering quality to ensure production-grade deliverables.
Engage with founders, CTOs, and senior technical 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 and platform improvements.
Ensure engagements produce reusable value: platform capabilities, reference architectures, tooling, benchmarks, documentation, or automation.
Prevent the function from becoming one-off consulting by setting boundaries and rewarding reusable outcomes.
Partner with Product and Engineering leadership to close the loop on recurring friction and improve customer experience beyond single engagements.

Requirements

12–18+ years of experience across engineering, solutions architecture, customer engineering, field engineering, or forward deployed engineering.
3–7+ years leading technical field organizations, including building a new function or materially scaling an existing team.
Demonstrated record of hiring, coaching, and scaling Customer Engineering, FDE, Solutions Architecture, or Field CTO teams.
Technical judgment to review and elevate architectures across AI applications, inference, infrastructure, and data platforms.
Proven track record of converting customer and partner feedback into shipped platform improvements.
Executive presence and credibility as a trusted advisor to founders, CTOs, and enterprise technical executives.
Experience working across cloud providers, AI platforms, ISVs, open-source communities, and strategic technology partners.

Nice to have

Strong relationships across the AI and cloud ecosystem.
Public technical leadership (talks, workshops, reference architectures, open source projects, developer advocacy).
Experience building FDE/Customer Engineering/Field Engineering from zero to one or scaling across regions without lowering the bar.
Prior roles as founder, VP Engineering, Field CTO, Head of Customer Engineering, or early FDE leader.
Led production architecture/execution for demanding AI application, training, inference, or platform workloads.

Compensation

Base compensation range: $270,800 - $310,000 USD (listed in the posting). Actual compensation will be determined by experience, level, and location.
100% company-paid medical, dental, and vision coverage for employees and families.
401(k) plan with up to 4% company match and immediate vesting.
Parental leave: 20 weeks paid for primary caregivers, 12 weeks for secondary caregivers.
Remote work reimbursement: up to $85/month for mobile and internet.
Company-paid short-term, long-term disability, and life insurance.
Competitive compensation, career growth, flexibility, collaborative culture, and international teams.

Location & Remote

Nebius is headquartered in Amsterdam with R&D hubs across Europe, the UK, North America, and Israel. The posting states you are welcome to work remotely in the United States.

GPU orchestration GPU clusters inference runtimes managed inference agent development environments data pipelines cloud infrastructure cloud providers AI platforms open source

Skills

Engineering leadership Organization building Talent development Hiring Coaching Technical judgment Architecture review Partner engagement Stakeholder management Product discovery Cross-functional collaboration Executive presence Strategic thinking Operating model design Delivery management

Experience Level

USD 270,800 - 310,000/year

Employment Type

Full Time