FDE Lead, NYC

present of AI; New York (NY); On-site; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Exa in New York City is seeking a Lead level, full-time engineer to head a forward deployed team for the eastern US, owning what happens after a deal closes. You will still write and debug code, review customer architectures, and manage the toughest accounts directly.

A strong candidate has hands-on engineering plus technical customer-facing work, and has led or mentored engineers while being measured on retention and expansion.

Qualifications

• Hands-on engineering experience plus technical customer-facing work.
• Experience leading or mentoring engineers and focusing on retention and expansion.

Responsibilities

• Lead a forward deployed engineering team for the eastern US, owning post-deal outcomes.
• Continue to write and debug code, review customer architectures, and handle the most challenging accounts directly.

Job description

Operations · New York City · FullTime · Lead level

This is a player coach job leading a forward deployed engineering team for the eastern US, owning what happens after a deal closes. The person must still write and debug code, review customer architectures, and handle the hardest accounts directly. A strong candidate has years of hands on engineering plus technical customer facing work, and has led or mentored engineers while being measured on retention and expansion.

How it fits the AI era

The product is a search engine built for AI models and agents, so the work sits close to how AI systems retrieve and use information. Much of the routine integration setup can be sped up with AI tooling, but judging search quality, debugging live production systems, and earning trust with customer engineering leaders stay human. The role rewards people who can connect technical fixes to revenue outcomes.

How it builds AI experience

Working here means building with LLMs, retrieval and agents against a live search API used by AI labs and large companies. A candidate can strengthen this by shipping projects that use retrieval augmented generation and by learning to measure search and retrieval quality. Experience with developer tools or API products would map well to the customer base.

Worth showing

• Production server building
• Debugging customer integrations
• Search and retrieval work
• LLM and RAG projects
• Leading technical engineers

This is our own read, written from the employer's posting and the company's Spotlight. The employer's posting is the source of truth for the role.

About Exa

Exa is an applied AI lab that builds a search engine and API for AI models and agents, per the company.