Forward Deployed Strategist AI (MBB) $230K + Equity | San Francisco, USA

Big Wave Digital; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive equity

Fully covered medical & dental

Relocation support

Visa sponsorship (OPT and H1B)

Job summary

Big Wave Digital seeks a Forward Deployed Strategist to seal seven- and eight-figure automation pilots with Fortune 500 clients, then personally deliver them into production. You will take warm intros from the CEO, scope deployments, align executives from ops to the C-suite, and lead cross-functional teams to production-ready pilots in San Francisco.

You must blend enterprise sales discipline with hands-on delivery, owning the commercial relationship end-to-end and identifying the next five

Qualifications

• 3+ years at senior level in enterprise sales or consulting with delivery impact.
• Experience running enterprise-wide change, transformations or post-merger integrations.
• Ability to present to executive committees without partner support.

Responsibilities

• Take warm introductions from the CEO and sell seven- and eight-figure pilots to Fortune 500 executives.
• Deliver what you sold by leading deployments into production.
• Scope deployments by learning a client's process better than internal staff.
• Align stakeholders from operations to the C-suite.
• Lead a cross-functional team including engineers and take pilots to production.
• Identify next five processes to automate and own the commercial relationship end-to-end.

Skills

Enterprise sales experience

Big tech / scale-up background

Client relationship management

Cross-functional leadership

Education

MBA or Masters encouraged

Job description

This Forward Deployed Strategist role puts you at the centre of a very well funded AI company's push into the Fortune 500, selling and then personally delivering seven and eight figure automation pilots inside the world's largest regulated businesses.

San Francisco fog.

Your slide deck becomes software.

Nobody reads decks.

— Haiku by Keiran, your friendly recruiter

San Francisco — Where Your Career Takes Flight

We are running this one discreetly and will name the company on our call. What we can say: they raised big this year at a nine-figure valuation, from investors you would recognise instantly, and the team is still small enough that equity means something.

They automate the processes long considered impossible to automate — the hundred-step, judgment-heavy, half-in-someone's-head workflows big companies still run on people, because code could never quite handle them and language models alone are too unpredictable to trust. Their system does both: the reliability of software, the judgment of a model, and the ability to adapt when the rules change.

It runs in production today inside some of the largest regulated businesses in the world, at very high accuracy, across hundreds of thousands of live runs. Every pilot they have started has converted to full production. Every single one. That is not a pipeline, it is a conveyor belt, and right now there is nobody to run it.

The Bay Bridge | San Francisco's hills

What You Actually Do

• Take warm introductions from the CEO and sell seven and eight figure pilots to Fortune 500 executives
• Then deliver what you sold — most people in this seat never get to do both
• Scope the deployment by learning a client's process better than the people who run it
• Align a stakeholder web running from the operations floor to the C-suite
• Lead a cross-functional team, including the engineers building it, and take the pilot into production
• Go find the next five processes in the building and own the commercial relationship end to end

It is not consulting, because the deck is replaced by working software and you stay for the outcome. It is not enterprise sales, because you are accountable long after the ink dries. It is not a delivery job, because you carry the number.

San Francisco — where the pilots turn into production

Who We're Looking For (Two Paths In)

Archetype One: The Consultant Who Wants to See It Ship

• 3+ years at MBB, or 4+ years at a Tier 2 firm with a promotion to prove it
• Have run enterprise-wide change, transformation or post-merger integration work
• Have stood in front of a client executive committee without a partner in the room
• A technical or technical-adjacent brain: engineering, computer science, maths, physics, or enough time near build teams to hold your own on implementation
• Tired of the deck being the deliverable — here the deliverable is a system running in production on Monday, with your name on it

Archetype Two: The Operator From Big Tech or a Scale-Up

• Enterprise AE, deployment strategist, GTM lead, BizOps or technical product manager at a company like Google, or a Series C+ business selling into the Fortune 500
• Forward-deployed experience at a big enterprise data platform is the closest thing to this job in existence
• Founders already know what owning all of it feels like
• Have carried a quota or a commercial target and hit it, and taken something from pilot to full rollout with numbers you can name out loud

MBA and Masters candidates actively encouraged. Senior track: 6+ years with formal enterprise ownership. Junior track: 2 to 5 years, customer-facing, with top-tier delivery behind you. Both open now.

In Every Case

• Personally owned enterprise client relationships, not supported someone who did
• Can scope, negotiate and close
• Can lead a team through a deployment that went sideways in week six and bring it back
• Judgment under ambiguity, because the playbook you need has not been written and you are the one writing it

Not the Right Fit If

• Your career is finance, private equity, banking or hedge funds with no customer-facing chapter
• You advised on client relationships rather than owned them
• Your background is purely functional or purely technical with no consulting foundation
• You would prefer to work from home — this is a lovely role for someone else

The Culture, Without the Euphemisms

Roughly a third of the team are former founders. The rest come from the best enterprise software companies, the best growth teams and the best consulting firms.

They hire for one trait above all, and it is not polish. It is intense curiosity about how the world actually works, paired with the agency to go and do something about it. New joiners give a talk on any subject they love.

This is an intense company and they say so plainly. Long hours, high ownership, whatever it takes. The pace is not for everyone and they would rather you knew now than in month three. In return you get talent density you will struggle to find elsewhere, and a genuinely kind group of people.

Process and Package

Five stages: intro call, technical screen, case study, culture screen, and an on-site work trial where you present your solution to executives in a simulated deployment. A real test, and a real preview.

What's on Offer

• $230K Base Salary, Up To
• Competitive Equity, Room to Run
• Fully Covered Preventive Medical & Dental
• Relocation Support
• Visa Sponsorship, Including OPT and H1B

The city where the pilots ship — join us in San Francisco

Confidential conversations welcome. Tell us about the hardest deployment you have ever owned, and what broke.

Why This Forward Deployed Strategist Role Stands Out

A seat like this at a company converting every single pilot to full production is rare. You are not writing decks that sit in a folder; you are shipping software that runs inside the largest regulated businesses in the world and staying accountable for the outcome. With a base up to US$230K, competitive equity, relocation support and visa sponsorship including OPT and H1B, this is built for an MBB consultant or enterprise operator who wants to trade the deliverable for the deployment.