Technical Program Manager, OCI Infrastructure - Customer Engineering
Role Description
Manage the development and implementation process of a specific company product.
Manage the development and implementation process for large, complex and critical company products involving departmental or cross-functional teams focused on the delivery of new or existing products. Plan and direct schedules and monitor budget/spending. Monitor the project from initiation through delivery. Organize the interdepartmental activities ensuring completion of the project/product on schedule and within budget constraints. Assign and monitor work of systems analysis and program staff, providing technical support and direction. Communicate status to executive management regularly.
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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