Head of Forward Deployed Engineering

Flow Engineering; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Flow Engineering is seeking a Head of Forward Deployed Engineering to lead a team that turns signed customers into deeply embedded, growing accounts. You will own customer integrations and design AI workflows aligned with each client’s engineering stack, driving adoption across their organization.

The role sits at the crossroads of engineering, product, and revenue, requiring hands-on coding, strong API knowledge, and a track record of expanding strategic accounts in aerospace, defense,

Qualifications

• 7+ years in forward deployed engineering, solutions engineering, software engineering, or a technical customer-facing role.
• 2+ years leading a team.
• Strong integrations, API and data-model reasoning.
• Hands-on experience building AI workflows for customers.
• Track record of driving adoption and expanding accounts.
• Comfort operating across organizations from engineers to VPs.

Responsibilities

• Build and lead the forward deployed engineering function, including hiring, setting the operating model, and coordinating with sales, product, and engineering.
• Own customer integrations end to end, connecting Flow to PLM, ALM, CAD, simulation, and issue-tracking tools.
• Design and deploy AI workflows tailored to each customer's requirements and systems engineering processes.
• Own product growth and usage within accounts, tracking adoption and expanding across teams.
• Identify new programs and build the technical case for growing each account.
• Take clean handoffs from sales engineers on pilots and convert to production deployments.
• Feed field learnings back to product and engineering to influence the roadmap.
• Stay hands-on: write code, build integrations, and work with customer engineers when it matters.

Skills

Leadership

Integrations

LLMs

Hands-on coding

Customer-facing

Adoption & expansion

Cross-functional collaboration

Tools

Jama

DOORS

Job description

About Flow

Flow Engineering is an AI-native requirements platform for modern engineering organizations, enabling hardware teams to collaborate with AI agents to design, validate, and evolve complex systems with speed and rigor.

About the role

Flow is seeking a Head of Forward Deployed Engineering to lead the team that turns signed customers into deeply embedded, growing accounts. Our customers are systems and engineering leaders at aerospace, defense, automotive, and hardware companies, and the value they get from Flow depends on how well it connects to their existing tools and how quickly their teams adopt AI-driven workflows. You will own that outcome.

This role sits at the intersection of engineering, product, and revenue. Sales engineers own the technical win before a deal closes. You and your team own everything after: integrating Flow into each customer's engineering stack, building AI workflows around their real processes, driving usage across teams, and expanding accounts into new programs, sites, and business units.

What you'll do

• Build and lead the forward deployed engineering function, including hiring, setting the operating model, and defining how the team works with sales, product, and engineering.

• Own customer integrations end to end, connecting Flow to the PLM, ALM, CAD, simulation, and issue tracking tools our customers already rely on.

• Design and deploy AI workflows tailored to each customer's requirements and systems engineering process, and turn the patterns that work into repeatable playbooks.

• Own product growth and usage within accounts: track adoption, identify where teams are stuck, and drive Flow from a single team to broad use across an organization.

• Own customer expansion, partnering with account executives to identify new programs, teams, and use cases, and building the technical case for growing each account.

• Take clean handoffs from sales engineers on pilots and convert them into successful production deployments.

• Feed what you learn in the field back to product and engineering, and influence the roadmap based on what customers actually need.

• Stay hands‑on: you will write code, build integrations, and sit with customer engineers when it matters.

About you

• 7+ years in forward deployed engineering, solutions engineering, software engineering, or a technical customer-facing role, with 2+ years leading a team.

• Strong technical foundation: you can build integrations, reason about APIs and data models, and understand how software fits into a complex engineering stack.

• Hands‑on experience building with LLMs or deploying AI‑driven workflows in production for customers.

• A track record of driving adoption and expanding accounts, not just delivering projects.

• Comfortable operating across a customer organization, from individual engineers up to VPs and program leads.

• Able to build a function from an early stage, balancing hands‑on execution with setting structure for a growing team.

• Comfortable in a fast‑moving environment where the product, the customer base, and the team are all scaling quickly.

Nice to have

• Familiarity with requirements, systems engineering, PLM, or ALM tooling (Jama, DOORS, etc.)

• Background in or working with defense, aerospace, or regulated hardware environments.

• Experience with security and compliance requirements common in these industries (ITAR, CMMC, on‑prem or restricted deployments).