Lead Forward Deployed Engineering

Gen Digital Inc.; New York (NY); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 280,000; Full time

Job summary

Gen Digital Inc. is seeking a hybrid leader/individual contributor to shape and govern the Forward Deployed Engineering strategy. You will own key partner integrations, drive repeatable delivery standards, and collaborate with Backend/Frontend, Solutions Engineering, and Product to accelerate value across the partner ecosystem.

You will mentor FDEs, establish best practices, and manage high-stakes engagements with internal stakeholders, ensuring scalable, safe, production-ready builds.

Qualifications

• 8+ years in senior or staff integration roles across platforms.
• Proven ability to ship production-grade code.
• Deep experience with REST/JSON APIs and versioning.
• Experience building reusable architecture and playbooks.
• Familiarity with AI-native tooling and code-generation pipelines.
• Strong leadership in cross-functional settings.
• Comfort hosting technical working sessions with partner teams.
• Pattern-recognition for packaging repeatable solutions.

Responsibilities

• Own technical strategy for demand-side delivery across partner portfolio.
• Develop SOPs and best practices to accelerate delivery.
• Lead the most complex, ambiguous, or net-new vertical integrations end-to-end.
• Translate bespoke builds into reusable modules and runbooks.
• Architect and govern AI-native engineering practices.
• Mentor FDEs through design and code reviews.
• Drive structured feedback loops with Product/Engineering to reduce bespoke work.

Skills

Senior integration lead

Scala/Python

Node.js/TypeScript

REST/JSON APIs

Reusable architecture

AI-native workflows

Partner collaboration

Mentoring teams

Job description

Engine’s Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) function is our partner-embedded Engineering team that owns demand partner integrations and custom development work for partners of Engine’s marketplace, with the north star of producing quality code and accelerating marketplace revenue. We’re hiring a player-coach to help accelerate the team through its next phase: standing up repeatable delivery standards, governing AI-native build practices, owning our highest-stakes partner engagements, and building credibility with internal Product & Engineering stakeholders.

This is a hybrid leadership/individual contributor role. You’ll help shape strategy for the FDE team and define best practices within the team and working with other internal stakeholders. You will also act as the lead FDE on the integrations that matter most - new verticals, non-standard partner APIs, and on hosted experiences where an experienced builder needs to be in the room. Aside from external partners, you’ll also partner closely with Backend and Frontend Engineering, Solutions Engineering, Product, and other commercial stakeholders.

What you’ll do:

• Own technical strategy for demand-side delivery across the partner portfolio, setting standards adopted across FDE and SE

• Work with your manager and other cross-functional leaders to develop standard operating procedures/processes, implementing best practices to help accelerate the team

• Take personal ownership of the most complex, ambiguous, or net-new-vertical integrations end-to-end

• Turn bespoke builds into a repeatable motions - shared modules, templates, runbooks, etc

• Architect and govern AI-native engineering practices: code-gen pipelines, mapping automation, test-scaffolding agents, and the human-review gates that keep AI-assisted builds safe and production-ready

• Mentor FDEs through design and code review, creating a feedback loop that helps raises the team’s engineering standard

• Drive structured Product/Engineering feedback loops that reduce future bespoke work, and free team bandwidth to work on new work streams

What you bring:

• 8+ years experience with time in a senior/staff integration, platform, or forward-deployed engineering role. People leadership or strong informal team leadership preferred.

• Production-quality code in Scala and/or Python, with comfort in Node.js/TypeScript for SDKs and tooling.

• Deep REST/JSON API fluency: auth, idempotency, schema evolution, versioning, and the operational tail (monitoring, incident response).

• A track record standing up reusable architecture, tooling, or playbooks that scaled a team’s output without proportional headcount growth.

• AI-native workflow fluency - you use tools like Claude Code, Cursor, or Copilot as a first-class accelerant, and know when to drop to deterministic approaches.

• Comfort running technical working sessions directly with partner engineering teams.

• A pattern-recognition instinct: after solving something novel, you package the repeatable version.