Director, Forward Deployed Engineering

About ForgeVista

ForgeVista deploys AI inside real businesses: production systems that change how work gets done, not slide decks or proofs of concept. Our forward-deployed teams embed with operating companies to build, ship, and scale AI at startup speed with enterprise quality. We work AI-first and CLI-native, and we hire for evidence, not pedigree.

Three things define how we work: AI Now (we ship with AI daily, not "someday"), CLI Native (the terminal is our cockpit, every role, every person), and High Agency (you own the outcome and move without waiting for permission).

Before you apply, please read our culture deck: https://forgevista.ai/culture — our culture isn't aspirational, it's how we actually operate. If it doesn't resonate, this probably isn't the right fit.

Full role, time-allocation, and skills map: https://forgevista.ai/careers/director-forward-deployed-engineering

The role ------------

You'll build the Forward Deployed Engineering function as a player/coach, close enough to delivery to keep standards real. You design the operating model, playbooks, and human + agent pod structure the team runs inside, and you hire and develop the engineers who execute it. Remote-first, with travel set by each client (fully remote to ~25–50% on-site).

How we work: ship with AI daily, live in the CLI, and operate with high agency. Please read our culture deck before applying.

What you'll do ------------------

• Own delivery outcomes across accounts: discovery prototype production adoption
• Set the bar for "done" (evals, reliability, security, change management) and design every deployment to leave client teams able to run it
• Turn field learnings into repeatable playbooks, templates, and reference implementations
• Architect the pod model: how strategist, builders, and AI agents compose into a 90-day delivery unit
• Hire, level, and coach engineers through live deals and live deployments
• Drop into the hardest escalations and create forward motion

What we look for --------------------

• 8+ years shipping customer-facing outcomes under ambiguity
• Led multi-workstream deployments with executive stakeholders and real constraints (security, data, compliance, people)
• Built and maintained delivery standards (runbooks, acceptance criteria, evals)
• Hired and developed high-performing teams, and made the hard calls
• Comfortable in the CLI; you pair with AI agents as a default
• Translate fluently between business truth and technical execution

Our model is operator-first, AI-armed, CLI-native. If you've only led pure-engineering or pure-consulting teams, you may fight that grain.

Nice to have ----------------

• Experience designing an operating model from scratch: workflow maps, governance, leveling
• A point of view on where forward-deployed engineering is heading: Palantir pioneered it; OpenAI's Deployment Company, Anthropic's enterprise services firm, and Meta's enterprise unit are scaling it now

Compensation & logistics -----------------------------

• $260K–$340K base, benchmarked and paid regardless of outcomes, plus a discretionary annual incentive and a potential equity stake as part of the leadership team
• Health, dental, and vision coverage, plus a professional-development budget
• Remote-first; travel depends on the client (fully remote to ~25–50% on-site)
• US-based only: open to candidates located in the US and authorized to work here; we are not sponsoring visas at this time
• To apply: share deployments you've led and the artifacts that came out of them: playbooks, runbooks, eval harnesses

If you want to define FDE leadership before the industry settles it, we should talk.

*ForgeVista is an equal opportunity employer. We evaluate candidates based on demonstrated ability and proven immersion — not pedigree or credentials.*

The pay range for this role is:

260,000 - 340,000 USD per year(Remote)