Director of Forward Deployed Engineering

Magna Search Group; United States; Remote; USD 230,000 - 320,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Performance bonus

Job summary

Magna Search Group seeks a Director of Forward Deployed Engineering to architect and lead enterprise AI agent deployments across large customers. The role blends deep engineering with delivery management, working inside customer environments to configure AI agents, build automations, and connect the platform to core enterprise systems.

The right leader will scale the team, ensure delivery quality, and turn one-off customer work into repeatable product, while remaining hands-on on technical

Qualifications

• 12+ years in software/solutions engineering roles, with at least 4 years leading technical teams.
• Experience leading a sizeable customer-facing engineering team (forward deployed, solutions, implementation or deployment engineers).
• Experience shipping AI or LLM-based products into production for enterprise customers.
• Evidence of turning field learnings into product capabilities.
• Startup or scale-up SaaS experience, ideally having built a process where little existed.

Responsibilities

• Build and scale the Forward Deployed Engineering team, owning hiring standards and the interview process.
• Get new engineers ramped on the platform quickly so they can contribute to live customer work early.
• Manage and develop the team through regular 1:1s, technical reviews and goal setting, with coaching on both engineering and client-facing skills.
• Allocate engineering capacity across live implementations, pre-sales work and product contributions.
• Be accountable for predictable, high-quality go-lives across the customer portfolio, with clear standards for testing, launch and post-launch support.
• Review technical designs and integration plans before they go to customers, catching issues with security, permissions, data access and scalability early.
• Stay hands-on on the hardest problems, including complex integrations with HRIS, ITSM, ERP and identity platforms.
• Partner with Professional Services leadership, solutions and project management teams on staffing, capacity and forecasting.
• Act as the senior technical lead on key accounts, working directly with CIOs, CHROs and security leaders.
• Take ownership of escalations, from building the recovery plan through to resolution.
• Support Sales on proofs of concept and scoping, defining realistic success criteria and protecting the team from over-commitment.
• Feed what the team learns in customer environments back to Product and Engineering, identifying recurring custom work that should become standard platform functionality.
• Create the team's operating playbook, including reusable integration approaches, templates and documentation.
• Track and report on delivery performance, customer adoption and progress in reducing custom work.

Skills

Engineering leadership

Enterprise software

AI/LLM integration

Customer-facing

Hiring & mentoring

Tools

HRIS

ITSM

ERP

SSO standards

Job description

NOTE: You must be able to design, build, and deploy enterprise AI agents using agentic workflows, LLM tool calling, orchestration, RAG, multimodal retrieval, API integrations (SAP, SharePoint, Pipedrive, Palantir), bidirectional data flows, authentication, security, error handling, and end-to-end production architecture. If you are not in the weeds on this you will not be considered/hired.

Location: United States (Remote, with customer travel)

Reports To: VP, Professional Services

Employment Type: Full-Time, Permanent

Work Model: Remote within the US, with regular on-site customer visits

This is a player-coach leadership role, not a pure management seat. We are looking for leaders who can still get into the technical weeds with their engineers on a broken integration or a misbehaving AI workflow, and who are equally comfortable presenting to a CIO.

The Opportunity

Our client is a high-growth, venture-backed AI software company selling to large enterprises. Their platform uses large language models and AI agents to automate work across HR, IT and operations, and they are expanding quickly with global enterprise customers.

They are hiring a *Director of Forward Deployed Engineering* to build out and lead the engineering team responsible for getting their largest customers live. This team works directly inside customer environments, configuring AI agents, building automations and connecting the platform to core enterprise systems.

You will scale the team substantially over the next phase of growth, be accountable for delivery quality across every major deployment, and shape how the company rolls out AI agents to enterprise customers going forward. Most customer conversations in this role are technical, so credibility as an engineer matters as much as delivery management.

The company is looking for a rare mix: someone with genuine engineering depth, a long track record of landing complex enterprise implementations, and the instinct to turn one-off customer work into repeatable product.

What You'll Do

Team Leadership and Hiring

• Build and scale the Forward Deployed Engineering team, owning hiring standards and the interview process.
• Get new engineers ramped on the platform quickly so they can contribute to live customer work early.
• Manage and develop the team through regular 1:1s, technical reviews and goal setting, with coaching on both engineering and client-facing skills.
• Allocate engineering capacity across live implementations, pre-sales work and product contributions.

Deployment Delivery and Technical Oversight

• Be accountable for predictable, high-quality go-lives across the customer portfolio, with clear standards for testing, launch and post-launch support.
• Review technical designs and integration plans before they go to customers, catching issues with security, permissions, data access and scalability early.
• Stay hands-on on the hardest problems, including complex integrations with HRIS, ITSM, ERP and identity platforms.
• Partner with Professional Services leadership, solutions and project management teams on staffing, capacity and forecasting.

Customer and Executive Partnership

• Act as the senior technical lead on key accounts, working directly with CIOs, CHROs and security leaders.
• Take ownership of escalations, from building the recovery plan through to resolution.
• Support Sales on proofs of concept and scoping, defining realistic success criteria and protecting the team from over-commitment.

Field to Product and Scale

• Feed what the team learns in customer environments back to Product and Engineering, identifying recurring custom work that should become standard platform functionality.
• Create the team's operating playbook, including reusable integration approaches, templates and documentation.
• Track and report on delivery performance, customer adoption and progress in reducing custom work.

What We're Looking For

Experience

• NOTE: You must be able to design, build, and deploy enterprise AI agents using agentic workflows, LLM tool calling, orchestration, RAG, multimodal retrieval, API integrations (SAP, SharePoint, Pipedrive, Palantir), bidirectional data flows, authentication, security, error handling, and end-to-end production architecture. If you are not in the weeds on this you will not be considered/hired.
• 12+ years across software engineering, solutions engineering or technical customer-facing roles, with at least 4 years leading technical teams.
• Experience leading a sizeable customer-facing engineering team (forward deployed, solutions, implementation or deployment engineers).
• A strong history of delivering enterprise software implementations into large, complex client environments.
• Experience shipping AI or LLM-based products into production for enterprise customers.
• Evidence of turning field learnings into product capabilities.
• Startup or scale-up SaaS experience, ideally having built process where little existed.

Technical Skills

• A genuine engineering background, still able to review code, troubleshoot APIs and weigh in on architecture.
• Strong knowledge of APIs, authentication and SSO standards, and enterprise integration patterns.
• Experience with major enterprise HR or IT platforms.
• Exposure to agent orchestration frameworks, retrieval-augmented generation or modern AI tool integration standards is a strong asset.

Ideal Background

• Successful candidates may come from:
• Forward deployed, solutions or deployment engineering leadership at AI or platform companies
• Enterprise SaaS in HR tech, IT service management or workflow automation\
• Technical delivery or professional services leadership at high-growth software companies
• Leaders who have built a deployment function from an early stage
• AI or automation consulting, especially with pre-sales and proof-of-concept experience

Work Arrangement

This is a remote role open to candidates based in the United States, with regular travel to customer sites. Candidates based outside the US are not a fit for this role.

Compensation

• Plus meaningful equity and a performance bonus tied to delivery outcomes.
• A chance to build a function that sits at the center of the business, with real influence on product direction and customer success.

Our client is an equal opportunity employer committed to creating a diverse and inclusive environment.