Forward Deployed Engineering Manager

Madrona Venture Labs; Mountain View (CA); On-site; USD 160,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Significant pre-IPO stock options

Flexible working hours

Proximity to Stanford campus

Job summary

CommerceIQ in Mountain View is seeking a leader for their AI Labs team, responsible for deploying AI solutions in collaboration with enterprise customers. The candidate will manage a small team, ensuring quality delivery while leveraging AI tools like Claude and GPT-4.

This unique role offers significant pre-IPO stock options and the opportunity to influence AI development in commerce, operating at the intersection of engineering and business outcomes.

Qualifications

• Experience in customer-facing engineering, solutions engineering, or consulting roles.
• Ability to operate in ambiguous environments and solve real business problems.
• Background in technology or business consulting is required.

Responsibilities

• Work directly with enterprise customers to implement AI solutions.
• Translate ambiguous business problems into technical solutions.
• Manage a small team of engineers focused on deployments.

Skills

Customer-facing engineering

Technical solutions

Leadership

Business consulting

AI systems understanding

Tools

Claude

GPT-4

Cursor

Job description

Mountain View, California, United States

Company

CommerceIQ is building the AI platform that runs commerce for the world's largest brands. We are not selling AI demos. We are shipping AI agents for content, media, and sales into the workflows of the Fortune 100 every week.

Customers include Coca-Cola, Nestlé, Colgate-Palmolive, Mondelez, Samsung, and Kellogg's. Backed by SoftBank, Insight Partners, and Madrona. Headquartered in Mountain View with teams across the US, India, Canada, and the UK. Pre-IPO.

Role

We have thousands of enterprise users, proven product-market fit across digital shelf analytics, retail media, and sales operations, and the Fortune 100 running on our platform. That part works. Now we are building something new: autonomous AI agents that are already in customer hands and scaling fast. This is a 0-to-1 build inside a company that has the distribution, the data, and the customers to make it real.

The AI Labs team operates as a startup within the company. It needs its own engineering leader. Someone who can recruit a world‑class team in Mountain View, set the technical direction for agentic AI in commerce, and ship at a pace that matches the opportunity. We have engineering teams across the US, India, Canada, and the UK. Mountain View is the center of gravity for AI leadership.

This role reports directly to the Founders. We ship with Claude, GPT‑4, and open‑source models in production. Our engineers already write the majority of code with AI. Some things are great. Some things need to be rebuilt. The next leader will know the difference.

Onsite role with expectations that you are working from the office Monday‑Friday.

What You Will Do

Deploy AI Solutions with Customers

• Work directly with enterprise customers to implement AI agents and workflows across content, media, and sales use cases
• Customize and adapt CommerceIQ’s platform to fit real‑world customer environments
• Drive rapid iteration cycles based on customer feedback and usage

Bridge Customer Needs with Product & Engineering

• Translate ambiguous business problems into technical solutions and product requirements
• Provide structured feedback to product and engineering teams to improve core platform capabilities
• Identify patterns across customers and help shape repeatable product features vs one‑off solutions

Lead a High‑Impact Engineering Pod

• Manage a small team of engineers focused on customer deployments and solutioning
• Ensure high quality of delivery while maintaining speed and adaptability
• Balance hands‑on technical software development with AI tools like Claude, Cursor (~40%) with leadership and stakeholder management

Drive Business Impact

• Understand customer KPIs and ensure deployed solutions drive measurable outcomes
• Act as a trusted technical advisor to customer stakeholders
• Partner with GTM and Customer Success teams to expand and deepen customer value

Shape the Future of AI at CommerceIQ

• Bring frontline insights into how AI is used in production
• Influence how CommerceIQ evolves from SaaS to AI‑native workflows and agents

What We Look For

This is not a caretaker role. We need a builder. Here is what matters:

Builder with Customer Instinct

• Experience working in customer‑facing engineering, solutions engineering, or consulting roles
• Background in technology consulting, business consulting, or forward‑deployed engineering
• Ability to operate in ambiguous environments and solve real business problems

AI Product Exposure

• LLM‑powered features
• AI copilots / assistants
• Workflow automation
• Understanding of how AI systems behave in real‑world production environments

Product & Business Thinking

• Ability to connect technical solutions to business outcomes
• Strong intuition for what should be productized vs customized
• Experience collaborating closely with product teams
• Business consulting experience is a must‑have

Leadership & Execution

• Experience managing engineers or leading small teams
• Ability to drive high‑velocity execution in dynamic environments
• Strong communication skills across technical and non‑technical stakeholders

Why This Role is Unique

• You are closest to the customer problem – not building in isolation
• You influence both product direction and customer success
• You operate at the intersection of: Engineering, AI, and Business outcomes

Compensation and Benefits

Base: $160,000 - $210,000

Equity: Significant pre‑IPO stock options. This is a leadership seat and the equity reflects that. We are at a stage where senior hires still get meaningful ownership.

Location: Mountain View, CA. Onsite. 15 minutes from Stanford campus.

The window is now. The company has product‑market fit, revenue, and customers. The AI Labs team is being built right now. In 12 months this team will be set. The founding members will define the culture, the architecture, and the trajectory. This is that moment.

Real AI, not AI theater. Most companies are bolting AI onto legacy products and calling it innovation. We are rebuilding the entire platform around autonomous agents. Our agents are already in production, already in customer workflows, already making decisions. If you want to lead a team doing real AI, this is it.

Fortune 100 scale. Your decisions will directly affect how 2,200+ brands run their ecommerce. The Fortune 100 uses our platform to manage billions of dollars in commerce. This is not a sandbox.

Equity upside. Pre‑IPO. $200M+ raised from tier‑one investors. The economics of joining at this stage, in this role, are compelling.

Check out our LinkedIn page to learn more about what it’s like to work at CommerceIQ!

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, disability status or any other category prohibited by applicable law.