Lead Forward Deployed Engineer

United States Digital Space LLC; New York (NY); Hybrid; USD 137,000 - 270,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Fertility assistance

Parental leave

Health benefits

Job summary

United States Digital Space LLC is seeking a Lead Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) to own broad technical strategy across the FDE domain. You will set architecture standards, mentor senior engineers, and partner with product and executive leadership to align multi-quarter roadmaps.

The role blends hands-on coding with high-stakes strategic guidance. You will engage with customer executives and internal leaders, championing scalable platform solutions while maintaining engineering rigor and

Qualifications

• 10+ years of relevant engineering leadership experience.
• Proven ability to set organizational technical strategy.
• Experience designing production-grade integrations or platforms.
• Ability to influence VP/executive stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Own the FDE organization's overall engagement strategy across portfolio.
• Act as technical counterpart to customer execs and internal stakeholders on strategic bets.
• Set architecture standards and design principles for multi-quarter strategy.
• Stay hands-on when needed to unblock critical failures and write code.
• Translate field-wide patterns into long-term technical vision for Product & Engineering.
• Grow and develop FDEs through mentorship and calibration; participate in hiring decisions.
• Serve as final technical judge in deadlocked situations and represent FDE in planning forums.

Skills

Technical leadership

Strategic thinking

Executive engagement

Mentorship

Hiring & calibration

Tools

LLM systems

AI platforms

Distributed systems

Job description

Lead Forward Deployed Engineers (FDE) are the most senior technical leaders in the FDE organization. They own the overall technical strategy for the FDE domain, not just individual engagements, and are accountable for how the entire function operates, scales, and improves over time. They set direction across multiple concurrent engagements, teams, and quarters, and are the technical voice the organization relies on when stakes, ambiguity, or cross-functional complexity are highest. This role sits at the intersection of technical depth, organizational strategy, and people leadership, setting the technical bar for the function, shaping how Product and Engineering prioritize based on field reality, and developing the next generation of Staff-level FDEs.

We are looking to speak to candidates who are based in New York City for our hybrid working model.

Responsibilities

• Own the FDE organization's overall engagement strategy, serving as the primary technical escalation point across the portfolio for the highest-risk, highest-visibility, and most ambiguous situations
• Act as the trusted technical counterpart to customer executives and internal VP/executive stakeholders on strategic bets, major risks, and cross-portfolio tradeoffs
• Set the technical architecture standards and design principles that govern how the FDE domain builds customer-facing solutions and platform capabilities, turning organization-level ambiguity into coherent multi-quarter technical strategy
• Stay hands-on where it matters most, writing and reviewing code and personally unblocking the hardest technical failures to keep the organization's technical bar grounded in reality
• Own the translation of field-wide patterns into the FDE domain's long-term technical vision, representing that vision to Product and Engineering executive leadership and defending multi-quarter roadmap tradeoffs
• Own the technical growth and career development of FDEs through mentorship, coaching, and calibration of the org's technical bar, and play a lead role in hiring and leveling decisions
• Serve as the final point of technical judgment when the team is deadlocked, and represent the FDE function in executive and cross-org planning forums

Qualifications

• 10+ years of relevant engineering experience, including a demonstrated track record of hands-on technical leadership in production systems and complex enterprise environments
• Demonstrated success setting technical strategy and direction at an organizational level, shaping how an entire function operates rather than leading initiatives within a single team
• Proven experience designing and directing production-grade integrations, platforms, or distributed systems across multiple concurrent engagements or teams
• Excellent technical judgment under high ambiguity, with a track record of making and being accountable for organization-level tradeoffs between customer impact, speed, maintainability, and risk
• Demonstrated ability to influence and align VP/executive-level stakeholders, internally and at customer organizations, on strategic technical direction
• Track record of developing senior and staff-level engineers through mentorship, coaching, and technical calibration, with willingness to travel up to 30% for executive engagements and technical reviews
• Preferred: experience setting technical strategy for LLM, agent framework, retrieval, evaluation, or production AI systems at an organizational level, prior experience as a Staff-level FDE, and experience contributing to hiring bar-raising or leveling frameworks at organizational scale

About the company

the company is built for change, empowering our customers and our people to innovate at the speed of the market. We have redefined the data platform for the AI era, enabling builders to create, transform, and disrupt industries with software. the company's unified data platform, the most widely available, globally distributed data platform on the market, helps organizations modernize legacy workloads, embrace innovation, and unleash AI. Our cloud-native platform, the company Atlas, is the only globally distributed, multi-cloud data platform and is available across AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure.

With offices worldwide and over 67,000 customers, including 75% of the Fortune 100 and AI-native startups, relying on the company for their most important applications, we're powering the next era of software.

Our compass at the company is our Leadership Commitment, guiding how and why we make decisions, show up for each other, and win. It's what makes us the company.

To drive the personal growth and business impact of our employees, we're committed to developing a supportive and enriching culture for everyone. From employee affinity groups, to fertility assistance and a generous parental leave policy, we value our employees' wellbeing and want to support them along every step of their professional and personal journeys. Learn more about what it's like to work at the company, and help us make an impact on the world!

the company is committed to providing any necessary accommodations for individuals with disabilities within our application and interview process. To request an accommodation due to a disability, please inform your recruiter.

the company, Inc. provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type and makes all hiring decisions without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.

REQ ID: 2273494817

the company’s base salary range for this role is posted below. Compensation at the time of offer is unique to each candidate and based on a variety of factors such as skill set, experience, qualifications, and work location. Salary is one part of the company’s total compensation and benefits package. Other benefits for eligible employees may include: equity, participation in the employee stock purchase program, flexible paid time off, 20 weeks fully-paid gender-neutral parental leave, fertility and adoption assistance, 401(k) plan, mental health counseling, access to transgender-inclusive health insurance coverage, and health benefits offerings. Please note, the base salary range listed below and the benefits in this paragraph are only applicable to U.S.-based candidates.

the company’s base salary range for this role in the U.S. is:

$137,000 — $270,000 USD