Manager, Forward Deployed Engineering

ID.me; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 188,000 - 275,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical

Dental

Vision

401(k) with company match

Parental leave

Unlimited PTO

Job summary

ID.me is seeking a Manager of Forward Deployed Engineering to sit within Product Operations and lead a small team embedded with customers. You will translate real-world problems into precise technical requirements for product and engineering, and build trust with customer technical stakeholders.

You will prioritize the team's backlog, align work with roadmaps, and mentor engineers while representing ID.me's technical roadmap externally and internally.

Qualifications

• 5+ years in a customer-facing engineering role (forward deployed engineering, solutions engineering, sales engineering, or implementation engineering).
• 2+ years managing engineers.
• Track record translating messy customer problems into clear technical specs.
• Experience building and prioritizing a backlog for a small team under competing deadlines.
• Strong technical fluency — read API docs, discuss data models, troubleshoot integrations.
• Excellent relationship-building with technical and non-technical stakeholders, including exec level.
• Clear, structured written and verbal communication; bridging diverse teams.

Responsibilities

• Serve as the primary translator between customers and ID.me's product ontology and engineering teams.
• Document and route customer-reported issues and edge cases with context for product and engineering.
• Build repeatable processes (templates, intake forms, escalation paths) to prevent miscommunication.

Skills

Customer-facing

Engineering leadership

Requirements translation

Backlog management

APIs & data models

Relationship building

Communication

Job description

Company Overview

ID.me is the next-generation digital identity wallet that simplifies how individuals securely prove their identity online. Consumers can verify their identity with ID.me once and seamlessly login across websites without having to create a new login and verify their identity again. Over 152 million users experience streamlined login and identity verification with ID.me at 20 federal agencies, 45 state government agencies, and 70+ healthcare organizations. More than 600+ consumer brands use ID.me to verify communities and user segments to honor service and build more authentic relationships. ID.me’s technology meets the federal standards for consumer authentication set by the Commerce Department and is approved as a NIST 800-63-3 IAL2 / AAL2 credential service provider by the Kantara Initiative. ID.me is committed to "No Identity Left Behind" to enable all people to have a secure digital identity. To learn more, visit https://network.id.me/.

Company Overview

ID.me is a full-time, in-office culture. Unless a specific job description explicitly states otherwise, all roles are on-site five days per week at one of our offices in McLean, VA; Mountain View, CA; New York City, NY; or Tampa, FL. Certain roles — such as field-based sales or other remote-by-design positions — may have different work arrangements as noted in their individual postings. At ID.me, we embrace the thoughtful use of AI tools in our daily work and there are even occasions where we leverage AI in our hiring process. However, during the interview process, we want to understand your individual skills and experiences. Therefore, we have guidelines on how AI can be appropriately used during your application and interviews which can be found here.

About The Role

ID.me is looking for a Manager of Forward Deployed Engineering to sit within Product Operations and act as the connective tissue between our customers, our product team, and engineering. This role owns a small team of forward-deployed engineers who embed directly with customers, diagnose real-world integration challenges, and translate what they learn into clear, structured input the product ontology and engineering teams can act on. You'll be equally comfortable in a customer war room and in a backlog-grooming session — someone who can build trust with a customer's technical stakeholders one hour and prioritize your team's next two sprints the next.

Customer problem communication

• Serve as the primary translator between customers and ID.me's product ontology and engineering teams — turning ambiguous, in-the-field customer problems into precise technical requirements, data model implications, and well-scoped engineering asks.
• Document and route customer-reported issues, edge cases, and feature gaps so product ontology and engineering have the context they need without having to talk to the customer directly.
• Build repeatable processes (templates, intake forms, escalation paths) that keep customer problems from getting lost or garbled between teams.

Team leadership and prioritization

• Manage and grow a team of forward deployed engineers, setting clear goals and providing technical and career mentorship.
• Build, maintain, and prioritize the team's backlog of customer-driven work, balancing urgent customer needs against long-term platform and ontology investments.
• Partner with Product Operations and Engineering leadership to align FDE work with broader roadmap and capacity planning.
• Establish metrics to track team throughput, customer impact, and time-to-resolution, and use them to continuously improve how the team operates.

Customer relationships

• Build durable, trusted relationships with customer technical and business stakeholders, acting as a face of ID.me during implementation, expansion, and escalation moments.
• Travel on-site or join deep working sessions with customers as needed to understand their environment firsthand.
• Represent the voice of the customer internally, and represent ID.me's technical roadmap and constraints externally, in a way that keeps both sides aligned.

What You'll Bring

• 5+ years in a customer-facing engineering role (forward deployed engineering, solutions engineering, sales engineering, or implementation engineering), with 2+ years managing engineers.
• Track record of translating messy, real-world customer problems into clear technical specs that engineering and data/ontology teams can execute against.
• Experience building and prioritizing a backlog for a small team under competing customer deadlines.
• Strong technical fluency — comfortable reading API docs, discussing data models, and troubleshooting integrations alongside engineers, without needing to write production code day-to-day.
• Excellent relationship-building skills with both technical and non-technical customer stakeholders, including at the executive level.
• Clear, structured written and verbal communication; comfortable being the bridge in a room full of people who don't naturally speak the same language.

Nice to Have

• Background in identity proofing, fraud, or data/knowledge graph and ontology systems.
• Prior experience at a high-growth B2B SaaS or platform company.

The annual base salary listed does not include a company bonus, incentive for sales roles, equity and benefits which will be determined based on experience, skills, education, relevant training, geographic location and role.

Mountain View, CA Pay Range

$188,000—$275,000 USD

Benefits

• medical
• dental
• vision
• health savings account
• flexible spending accounts (medical, limited purpose, dependent care, commuter benefit accounts)
• basic and voluntary life and AD&D insurance
• 401(k) with company match
• parental leave
• ability to participate in unlimited paid time off subject to the terms and conditions of the PTO policy
• including 8 company wide holidays
• short and long-term disability insurance
• accident and critical illness insurance
• referral bonus policy
• employee assistance program
• pet insurance
• travel assistant program
• wellbeing and childcare discounts
• benefit advocates
• a learning and development benefit

ID.me maintains a work environment free from discrimination, where employees are treated with dignity and respect. All ID.me employees share in the responsibility for fulfilling our commitment to equal employment opportunity. ID.me does not discriminate against any employee or applicant on the basis of age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances. ID.me adheres to these principles in all aspects of employment, including recruitment, hiring, training, compensation, promotion, benefits, social and recreational programs, and discipline. In addition, ID.me's policy is to provide reasonable accommodation to qualified employees who have protected disabilities to the extent required by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances where a particular employee works. Upon request we will provide you with more information about such accommodations.

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