Founding Head, Customer-Facing Engineering

Invoca; Chicago (IL); Hybrid; USD 200,000 - 275,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health benefits

Paid time off

Sabbatical program

401(k) match

Job summary

Invoca is seeking a Founding Head of Forward Deployed Engineering to build and lead a team of engineers embedded in our Go-to-Market motion. You will hire, coach, and scale the FDE function, prioritizing deals and accounts with technical needs and serving as the escalation point for high-stakes implementations.

In this player-coach role, you will influence pipeline, drive time-to-value for new customers, and shape product feedback from the field while growing the team into senior ICs, product,

Qualifications

• Experience in a Forward Deployed Engineer, Solutions Engineer, or similar customer-facing technical role.
• People management experience or proven leadership in a tech/customer-facing capacity.
• Strong business judgment on where to allocate engineering effort.
• Comfort working at the intersection of Sales, Product, and Engineering.
• Track record turning messy customer work into repeatable processes.
• Excellent executive communication to show impact to sales and leadership.

Responsibilities

• Hire, coach, and manage a team of Forward Deployed Engineers; set the bar for excellence.
• Triage and prioritize FDE deployment across the deal pipeline.
• Act as senior technical escalation point on strategic or high-risk deals.
• Partner with Sales, Solutions Engineering, and Customer Success leadership.
• Define how FDEs plug into sales/onboarding and where handoffs occur.
• Build the operating rhythm for PoCs, debriefs, and reusable assets.
• Aggregate field feedback to produce sharp product/engineering asks.
• Report team impact: deals influenced, time-to-value, win rates.

Skills

Forward Deployed Engineer

People management

Business judgement

Sales/PM/Eng liaison

Executive communication

Cross-functional leadership

Job description

Invoca is seeking a Founding Head of Forward Deployed Engineering to build and lead a team of engineers embedded in our Go-to-Market motion. You will hire, coach, and scale the FDE function, prioritizing deals and accounts with technical needs and serving as the escalation point for high-stakes implementations.

In this player-coach role, you will influence pipeline, drive time-to-value for new customers, and shape product feedback from the field while growing the team into senior ICs, product,