Head of Forward Deployment Engineering (FDE)

Parloa; New York (NY); On-site; USD 304,000 - 338,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading AI technology firm in New York is seeking a Head of Forward Deployed Engineering to oversee enterprise AI deployments. The role involves establishing scalable delivery models and ensuring high-quality implementation while building a high-performance organization. Candidates should have over 10 years of experience in customer-facing software roles and a proven track record in enterprise delivery. A competitive salary package is offered with OTE of $304,000 - $338,000 plus equity.

Qualifications

• 10 to 15+ years in customer-facing software engineering or related roles.
• 4+ years leading engineering delivery teams.
• Experience scaling engineering or solutions teams effectively.
• Demonstrated success in large-scale enterprise technical programs.
• Deep expertise across backend engineering and system integrations.

Responsibilities

• Own the success of enterprise AI deployments.
• Build and lead a high-performance organization.
• Ensure predictable, high-quality enterprise delivery.
• Standardize project governance and risk management.
• Define architectural guardrails and integration patterns.

Skills

Customer-facing software engineering

DevOps

Systems integration

Data engineering

Technical leadership

Stakeholder management

Planning and prioritization

Tools

TypeScript

Node.js

Python

Microsoft Azure

Kubernetes

Terraform

MongoDB

Job description

Overview

Parloa’s mission is to make every customer conversation feel effortless for both customers and the companies serving them. As agentic AI accelerates, Parloans are shaping the foundation of a new era in customer experience — one where customer support is no longer transactions, but meaningful exchanges. Parloa has powered over one billion interactions between global enterprise brands and their customers, with companies like IKEA and Booking.com deploying Parloa at scale.

About Parloa

Parloa’s mission is to make every customer conversation feel effortless for both customers and the companies serving them. As agentic AI accelerates, Parloans are shaping the foundation of a new era in customer experience — one where customer support is no longer transactions, but meaningful exchanges. It is not just a vision; Parloa has powered over ONE BILLION interactions between global enterprise brands and their customers, with companies like IKEA and Booking.com already deploying Parloa at scale.

About the role

As Head of Forward Deployed Engineering, AMER (FDE) at Parloa, you own the success of enterprise AI deployments. Your mission is to build and lead a world-class FDE organization that delivers predictable, high-quality, and scalable enterprise implementations—while continuously feeding field insight back into product and platform evolution.

You are responsible not just for delivery excellence across projects, but for shaping how Parloa scales enterprise AI adoption. You define the operating model, elevate technical standards, build leadership capacity within the FDE org, and ensure that what we deploy repeatedly becomes productized.

FDE is where product meets enterprise reality. As Head of FDE, you ensure that reality strengthens the product rather than fragmenting it.

Areas of ownership (Responsibilities)

• Regional FDE Strategy & Operating Model: Establish scalable delivery models (pods, vertical focus, specialization layers) and balance customization and productization to maximize impact and margin.
• Build and Develop a High-Performance Organization: Hire, coach, and develop Team Leads and senior FDEs as well as build leadership capacity within the organization (succession planning, career ladders, growth paths). Establish strong performance standards and accountability frameworks while ensuring a culture of ownership.
• Ensure Predictable, High-Quality Enterprise Delivery: Own delivery health across all strategic deployments by implementing scalable capacity planning, forecasting, and utilization management.
• Standardize project governance: risk management, escalation paths, dependency tracking and define quality benchmarks for architecture, security, reliability, and maintainability. Ensure strong production stability in enterprise environments.
• Drive Technical Excellence & Architectural Standards: Define architectural guardrails and reference patterns for enterprise deployments. Establish review mechanisms for high-impact technical decisions. Ensure repeatable integration patterns across enterprise systems (APIs, identity, data pipelines). Maintain deep technical credibility across cloud, backend, infra, and AI system design.
• Turn Field Learnings into Product Leverage: Identify recurring implementation patterns and push for productization. Partner closely with Product and Core Engineering to reduce one-offs implementations and provide educated input on roadmap prioritization using structured field data. Define criteria for what belongs in-product vs. what remains custom.
• Strengthen Customer & Executive Relationships: Serve as executive technical sponsor for key enterprise accounts. Build trust with CIOs, enterprise architects, and platform leaders. Support pre-sales for highly strategic opportunities. Represent FDE in executive customer escalations.

Our Technology Stack

TypeScript, Node.js, Python, Microsoft Azure, Kubernetes, Terraform, ArgoCD, MongoDB

Who you are

• Experience level: 10 to 15+ years in customer-facing software engineering, systems integration, DevOps, or data engineering roles with meaningful production responsibility.
• People leadership: 4+ years leading engineering delivery teams, ideally leaders-of-leaders (e.g., formal management, team lead responsibility, coaching, hiring, performance growth).
• Organizational leadership: Experience building and scaling engineering or forward-deployed/solutions teams. Proven ability to design operating models and scale delivery capacity. Strong hiring and talent development track record.
• Enterprise delivery track record: Demonstrated success delivering large-scale enterprise technical programs. Experience managing multiple parallel deployments with executive visibility. Strong grasp of stakeholder management in complex environments.
• Technical breadth and depth: Deep expertise across backend engineering, cloud infrastructure, infrastructure-as-code, and system integrations. Strong architectural judgment in high-stakes production systems. Ability to engage at depth on AI system design and integration.
• Strategic product thinking: Experience translating field patterns into product strategy. Strong intuition for what should be standardized vs. customized. Comfort influencing roadmap decisions through structured insight.
• Hands-on effectiveness: Able to personally own and drive smaller technical workstreams end-to-end and to jump into debugging/implementation when necessary.
• Operational excellence: Strong planning, prioritization, capacity thinking, and risk management; creates delivery clarity without unnecessary process overhead.
• Executive presence: Confident and credible with customer engineering teams and senior technical stakeholders; clear written and verbal communication.

Strong plus: experience with telephony architecture (PSTN, SIP), building or integrating AI/LLM-powered systems (agent workflows, orchestration, evaluation, vector DBs, guardrails), ideally in forward-deployed or solutions engineering environments.

Our recruiting process

Talent Acquisition → Hiring Manager → Technical Interview(s) → Bar Raiser

Why Parloa?

We’re at the beginning of a new era in customer experience, one where AI doesn’t just respond, but understands, reasons, and takes action. We’re building agentic AI that enterprises trust with their most important customer moments: complex questions, high volumes, real stakes. When millions of people reach out to a brand, those interactions aren’t just support tickets; they’re defining experiences. We’re here to raise the standard: making every conversation seamless, intelligent, and genuinely helpful. If you care about shaping how businesses and customers connect at scale—and want your work to matter in real, everyday moments—this is where you do it.

At Parloa, ownership isn’t a buzzword; it means being accountable for outcomes, not just tasks. We operate in a category that’s evolving fast, where the bar is high, and the problems are complex. We hire people who think in solutions, communicate with clarity, and follow through. People who are comfortable making decisions, taking responsibility, and raising the standard for themselves and those around them.

We’ve grown beyond the earliest startup phase, but we’ve kept the intensity: fast execution, direct feedback, and a strong expectation to contribute meaningfully from day one.

Backed by leading global investors like General Catalyst, EQT Ventures, and Altimeter Capital, we’re scaling with a clear ambition: to become the global category leader in enterprise-grade conversational AI.

OTE Salary Range - $304,000 - $338,000 OTE + Equity

Salary Range: $304,000 USD - $338,000 USD

Do you have questions about Parloa, the role, or our team before you apply? Please feel free to get in touch with our Hiring Team.

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* We provide equal opportunities to all qualified applicants regardless race, gender, sexual orientation, age, religion, national origin, disability status, socioeconomic background and other characteristics.