Director, Forward Deployed Engineering

Chalk; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 300,000 - 350,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, vision insurance

Lunch and dinner provided

Uber/Lyft home

Team building events

15 PTO days + 14 holidays

Job summary

Chalk is building a data platform for ML applications and is hiring a Forward Deployed Engineer leader. You will own the strategy, hiring, and execution of customer engagements from pre-sales pilots to onboarding and expansion.

This is a high-impact role reporting directly to founders and shaping the FDE function as Chalk grows. You will lead a team across New York and San Francisco, partner with Sales and Engineering, and stay hands-on to ensure successful customer outcomes in regulated

Qualifications

• 10+ years engineering experience with 3+ years leading customer-facing teams.
• Strong hands-on Python and SQL skills and ability to dive into customer architectures.
• Experience across pre-sales and post-sales enterprise motions including pilots, onboarding, support and expansion.

Responsibilities

• Lead and retain Chalk's Forward Deployed Engineers across New York and San Francisco; drive aggressive hiring.
• Define strategy and operating model for FDE; engagement models, account coverage, pre-sales/post-sales balance.
• Own systems for the team: triage, rotations, escalation paths, onboarding playbooks, and rollout processes.
• Partner with Sales and GTM on technical pilots, evaluations, and strategy behind key deals.
• Collaborate with Engineering to feed customer learnings into the product roadmap and tooling.
• Stay hands-on with customer architectures and unblock hard technical problems.
• Serve as executive-level technical counterpart to customer leadership at top accounts.
• Define career paths and grow the FDE function as Chalk scales.

Skills

Python

SQL

Leadership

Executive communication

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or equivalent

Job description

Chalk is building the data platform that powers the future of machine learning applications. We tear down complexity, latency, and scale barriers that have traditionally constrained ML capabilities. Our platform combines Rust-speed performance with elegant tools that developers love to use. Leading companies depend on Chalk for everything from stopping fraudulent credit card swipes, verifying identities, and maximizing clean energy capture. We've recently raised a $50 million Series A, led by Felicis.

About the role

Forward Deployed Engineering is where Chalk meets its customers. Our FDEs are exceptional software engineers who integrate Chalk’s platform with the best ML and engineering teams in healthcare, finance, and consumer technology — running technical pilots that win deals, onboarding new customers, and engineering feature pipelines that power use cases like fraud prevention, cancer detection, and product recommendation.

Working directly with our founders, you'll lead this team and define its future. You'll own the strategy for how Chalk engages customers technically — from pre-sales pilots through onboarding, support, and expansion — and build the organization, processes, and playbooks that let the function scale with our growth. FDE is one of the most strategically important and fastest-growing functions at Chalk, and this role will shape what it becomes.

We're in the office 5 days a week. When unavoidable conflicts come up, we’re flexible. This is not a hybrid role.

What you will do

• Lead, develop, and retain Chalk's team of Forward Deployed Engineers across New York and San Francisco, and own an aggressive hiring plan as the team scales
• Define the strategy and operating model for the FDE function: engagement models, account coverage, the pre-sales/post-sales balance, and how FDEs drive expansion within accounts
• Own the systems that make the team run — support triage and rotations, escalation paths to Engineering, onboarding playbooks, and the processes for rolling out platform changes to customer environments
• Partner closely with Sales and GTM leadership on technical pilots, evaluations, and the technical strategy behind our most important deals
• Partner with Engineering leadership to channel customer learnings into the product roadmap and to sharpen the internal tooling FDEs rely on
• Stay hands-on: dive into customer architectures, unblock hard technical problems, and set the technical bar for the team
• Serve as an executive-level technical counterpart to customer leadership at our largest accounts
• Define career paths and growth trajectories for FDEs, and champion the function's identity as we grow — deeply technical engineers embedded with customers, not sales engineering

What we're looking for

• 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 — proficient in Python and SQL, comfortable going deep on customer architectures and data infrastructure
• Experience across both pre-sales and post-sales complex enterprise motions: technical pilots and evaluations as well as onboarding, support, and account expansion
• Proven ability to hire, develop, and retain exceptional engineers, including senior ICs
• Previous experience at an early-stage, high-growth startup
• Executive-level communicator who can bridge technical, business, and customer contexts
• Experience building the processes and playbooks that let a customer-facing engineering team scale
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or equivalent
• Previous experience as a forward deployed engineer or FDE leader at a high-growth startup
• Experience building production ML systems, ML infrastructure, or data platforms
• Experience scaling a customer-facing engineering function from single-digit to multi-team
• Experience working with enterprise customers in regulated industries (fintech, healthcare)

Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision insurance for you and your family

15 days of PTO and 14 company holidays each year

Daily lunch and dinner on Chalk

Office is fully-stocked with drinks and snacks to fuel your work day.

Staying late? Dinner is on us

Staying even later? Grab an Uber / Lyft home on Chalk

Team building events & happy hours

Compensation

Salary Range

$300,000 – $350,000 - Offers equity + benefits

Chalk offers early team members a generous salary + equity package based on experience and competitive benefits.

Actual compensation awarded to successful candidates will be based on several factors, including but not limited to: market, location, scope of the position and individual qualifications objectively assessed during the interview process.

Our comprehensive total package plays a major role in how we recognize individuals for the impact they will have on Chalk’s growth and us achieving our goals.

Inclusivity

Chalk is an equal opportunity employer. We value diversity and inclusion and provide reasonable accommodations to anyone in need of individualized support.