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Customer Engineering Manager, Cloud AI, Strategic ISV, Google Cloud

$192K - $267K New York, NY, US Mid Posted October 07, 2026

Role Description

This role may also be located in our Playa Vista, CA campus.

Applicants in the County of Los Angeles: Qualified applications with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers and the California Fair Chance Act.

Applicants in San Francisco: Qualified applications with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers and the California Fair Chance Act.

Note: By applying to this position you will have an opportunity to share your preferred working location from the following: Sunnyvale, CA, USA; New York, NY, USA; Los Angeles, CA, USA; San Francisco, CA, USA.

Minimum qualifications:

  • Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience.
  • 10 years of experience with cloud native architecture in a customer-facing or support role.
  • Experience in leadership (e.g., people management, team lead, mentorship, coaching).
  • Experience with AI agent orchestration frameworks (e.g., LangGraph, CrewAI, AutoGen), agentic design patterns (e.g., tool-use, multi-agent collaboration), machine learning, or integrating models into autonomous workflows via advanced API prompting or RAG.
  • Experience with technical conversations, demos, prototyping, or workshops with customers.

Preferred qualifications:

  • Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or a technical field.
  • Experience supporting ISVs.
  • Experience as a pre-sales manager or technical customer-facing people manager within a professional services or sales engineering team.
  • Experience influencing cross-functional teams (e.g., Product Management, Engineering, Sales, Marketing, Partner), customers, and partners to impact business goals, customer experience, and customer expansion.
  • Experience tailoring and delivering compelling messages by audience, asking questions, and leading conversations that accelerate value realization and business opportunity.

About the job

As an AI Customer Engineering (CE) Manager, you lead a team of AI experts responsible for delivering AI outcomes from discovery to deployment for customers in the Strategic ISV (independent software vendor) segment, under the Software and Internet vertical. You will partner with AI sales and account teams to build AI tech strategies for focused accounts. You will identify market trends and customer use cases to drive the "Art of the Possible" demos, Proof of Concepts, and prioritize the highest-impact opportunities for Forward Deployment Engineers (FDEs).

Your team is responsible for working with Google’s largest ISV customers to provide trusted AI technical solution advice and to meet Cloud AI sales quota targets. You will accelerate AI workload migration, drive AI-native product adoption, and remove technical blockers. You foster a culture of technical excellence and understand the mechanics of architecture, delivery, and consumption within Google Cloud’s AI products and solutions.

Google Cloud accelerates every organization’s ability to digitally transform its business and industry. We deliver enterprise-grade solutions that leverage Google’s cutting-edge technology, and tools that help developers build more sustainably. Customers in more than 200 countries and territories turn to Google Cloud as their trusted partner to enable growth and solve their most critical business problems.

Individual pay is determined by factors including job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training.

US: $192000 - $267000 (USD) + 42.86% bonus target + equity + benefits

Learn more about benefits at Google.Responsibilities

  • Lead a team of Customer Engineers focused on Strategic ISVs (independent software vendors). Drive team culture, develop deep AI expertise, and foster a culture to deliver value to our customers.
  • Partner with Sales to develop technical go-to-market strategies and joint co-innovation plans, focusing on advanced AI workload adoption and repeatable ISV solution development.
  • Drive technical wins across the ISV ecosystem. Foster strategic relationships with Product to understand future roadmaps, resolve technical roadblocks, and provide critical feedback loops.
  • Develop trusted technical advisor relationships with senior stakeholders at our customers, act as their executive sponsor and advocate their adoption of Google AI products and services.
  • Balance technical leadership with operational excellence; lead workload and opportunity review meetings, providing insight into achieving technical wins and migration strategies with strategic ISVs. Oversee domain-specific prototyping, proofs-of-concept, and AI integration architectures.

Google is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. See also Google's EEO Policy and EEO is the Law. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know by completing our Accommodations for Applicants form.

About Forward Deployed Engineering

Forward Deployed Engineers are embedded directly with customers to build custom solutions, integrate products into existing infrastructure, and bridge the gap between product engineering and customer success. The role combines deep technical skills with the ability to operate in client environments and translate business requirements into working software.

Originally pioneered by Palantir, the FDE model has spread across AI, enterprise SaaS, and cloud infrastructure companies. FDEs write production code, architect integrations, train customer teams, and feed product insights back to the core engineering organization. At companies like OpenAI, Salesforce, and Databricks, FDE teams are treated as elite engineering units that can ship custom solutions in days rather than quarters.

Typical FDE stack: Python, TypeScript, SQL, REST/GraphQL APIs, cloud platforms (AWS/GCP/Azure), and increasingly LLM APIs and AI orchestration frameworks. Strong communication and the ability to context-switch between technical and business conversations are as important as coding ability.

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