Forward Deployed Lead

HTEC Group; Sacramento (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

HTEC Group is seeking a Forward Deployed Lead to manage client relationships and guide multidisciplinary teams through AI-driven solutions. You will own the customer engagement, oversee technical decisions, and ensure successful delivery across the full project lifecycle.

This role requires deep leadership in product or engineering, a strong business sense, and the ability to coordinate with engineers, designers, and client stakeholders. Travel to client sites is expected.

Qualifications

• 10+ years in product or engineering leadership roles.
• Experience guiding cross-functional delivery teams.
• Ability to translate business needs into technical plans.
• Experience with AI/ML projects is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Own the day-to-day customer relationship and ensure alignment between promises and delivery.
• Lead technical execution across requirements, architecture, coding, testing, deployment and support.
• Track milestones, unblock teams, and drive measurable client outcomes.

Skills

Customer relation

Technical oversight

Product and commercial sense

Leadership experience

Communication skills

Travel readiness

Problem-solving

Cross-functional collaboration

Job description

At HTEC, customers come to us with business problems they want to solve through AI: increasing revenue, reducing cost, and transforming customer service. Your job is to turn these problems into robust AI solutions that deliver business value.

As a Forward Deployed Lead, you'll work directly with customers to understand their challenges, then guide multidisciplinary teams to design and build solutions that actually work. You'll own the customer relationship and keep everything on track — making sure the right thing gets built, and customers see real results.

Apart from San Francisco, CA, the role is open across multiple locations in the U.S.

What you'll do

• Own the day-to-day customer relationship:

  Join calls, capture feedback, and keep customers informed. Maintain clear alignment between what's promised and what's being delivered. Be the trusted voice that customers rely on.

• Lead technical execution:

  Work across the full project lifecycle—from requirements gathering and system design to coding, testing, deployment, and support. You'll be the technical expert guiding implementation decisions.

• Deliver results:

  Track milestones, systematically unblock teams, push projects across the finish line. Overdeliver on impact and ensure customers see meaningful, measurable outcomes.

• Facilitate customer discovery:

  Run discovery sessions to uncover underlying needs, translate challenges into clear plans for engineers, and ensure you deeply understand the customer's business context.

What we're looking for

• Customer relationship experience:

  You understand what customers truly care about and how to communicate effectively through including in challenging situations. You build trust that withstands complexity.

• Technical oversight:

  Enough engineering depth to read code, hold your own in architecture discussions, and know when a technical decision is risky. You've been through the full cycle from concept to deployment.

• Product and commercial sense:

  You operate as an embedded insider. You learn the customer's business from the inside, including where revenue comes from, which workflows matter, and who holds budget, and use that to make sharp calls about what to build, what to sequence, and where the product can credibly expand across the org. You distinguish where the product is the real bottleneck from where execution or change management is, say no to requests when the tradeoffs call for it, and feed specific, evidence-backed signals back to the engineering team.

• A flexible mindset:

  You're resourceful, hands-on when needed, and committed to getting the job done. You don't wait for perfect information; you start the ball rolling and make things happen. You are comfortable in situations with constantly changing requirements and conflicting objectives.

• Relevant experience:

  10+ years in product or engineering leadership roles where execution and customer trust were critical to success. Experience leading cross-functional delivery teams in fast-moving, high-stakes environments.

• Communication skills:

  You can translate between product, technical, and business stakeholders, ensuring everyone understands what's being built and why it matters.

• Problem-solving orientation:

  You're comfortable navigating ambiguity, identifying blockers early, and finding creative solutions to keep projects moving forward.

• Comfort with travel:

  You'll be on-site with clients regularly, and your presence will matter.

A typical day could look like this:

You own one or more customer projects, maybe an AI content moderation system or automated customer support solution

• Morning standups with your team to review progress, address blockers, and align on priorities
• Customer call with a client CTO, executive team, or product lead to discuss progress, gather feedback on the latest demo, and align on next steps
• Update your PRD based on new insights from the customer conversation, clarifying requirements for the engineering team
• Afternoon heads-down time to update project timelines, prepare for upcoming customer demo, and coordinate with designers on user flows
• Quick sync with tech lead to discuss technical tradeoffs and ensure customer expectations align with what's feasible
• Maybe join a prospective customer call to understand their needs and help scope potential projects

Important context

• Customer engagement is key:

  You'll be close to the customer. You'll regularly interact with their teams, understand their constraints deeply, and ensure solutions fit their actual needs, not just stated requirements.

• Variety over predictability:

  You'll work across different customers, industries, and AI applications. Each project brings new challenges and learning opportunities. You won't be refining the same product quarter after quarter.

• Balance of autonomy and collaboration:

  You’ll own customer relationships and delivery, but you’ll work closely with engineering teams daily. Success requires both independent decision-making and collaborative problem-solving.

• Professional services context:

  Building for clients is different from building your own product. It requires adaptability, strong relationship skills, and comfort with changing priorities. It's not for everyone, but for the right person, it's incredibly rewarding.

• Remote and In-person collaboration:

  Though we are a remote team, our team only thrives through collaboration and open communication. Our expectation from every team member is to embody this mindset.

Our principles

• Show, don’t only tell:

  Excellence is our standard, both in our code and in our language

• Eat our own dogfood:

  We practice what we preach and use AI wherever possible

• We are one team:

  Our people and relationships are our competitive advantage