Director, Forward Deployed Engineering

Genesys•Virtual Office (Texas), NV

3d•$163,100 - $286,900

About The Position

Genesys is building a new Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) team to take high-value AI use cases from customer idea through production. The Director will build, coach and scale an approximately five-person team at launch, with growth planned as demand increases. FDEs embed with customer business and technical leaders to build agentic AI on customer systems, data and APIs, then take it through production and optimization. This is a hands-on, commercially minded player-coach role. The Director is accountable for customer outcomes, delivery quality, hiring standards and reusable assets, while shaping engagement strategy, staffing and feedback to Product and Engineering. The role requires the ability to review configurations, integrations and code, debug production agents and whiteboard architectures, alongside leading the team and engaging credibly with executives. The Director will establish team standards and repeatable delivery practices, lead strategic customer engagements from use case through production and optimization, and build reusable agents, prompts, integrations, evaluations and deployment patterns. The role also translates field learnings into product requirements, supports go-to-market planning with Sales and Pre-Sales, and reports on customer and business outcomes. Regular travel to customer sites and team events is required as engagements demand.

Requirements

At least 5 years leading customer-facing technical teams, such as forward deployed engineering, solutions architecture, pre-sales engineering, technical consulting or professional services.
Proven ability to attract, develop and retain senior technical talent and build a high hiring bar and strong team culture.
Experience operating in matrixed, customer-facing enterprise organizations and aligning Sales, Product, Engineering and Services around shared goals.
Demonstrated innovation leadership and ability to create repeatable processes without adding bureaucracy.
Strong hands-on software engineering background and working proficiency in Python, TypeScript/JavaScript, Java or an equivalent language.
Experience with REST APIs, Git and modern cloud architectures such as AWS.
Practical depth in LLMs and agentic AI, including prompting, tool calling, orchestration, retrieval-augmented generation, grounding, evaluation, guardrails and observability.
Experience taking AI or software solutions from prototype to production, including integration with enterprise systems, data and APIs.
Equally comfortable in C-suite strategy discussions and technical deep dives, translating complex AI architectures into business outcomes and measurable ROI.
Strong storytelling, workshop facilitation and stakeholder management skills, including experience embedding with customer teams in complex engagements.
Understanding of enterprise sales cycles, value-based positioning, and how technical delivery supports adoption, renewal and expansion.
Ability to balance customer success investment with commercial discipline and prioritize in ambiguous situations.
Bias for action, high ownership and a strong sense of urgency.
Regular travel to customer sites and team events as required by engagements.

Nice To Haves

Experience standing up a new team or service line.
Familiarity with AI-native development environments and coding agents, and willingness to use AI aggressively to accelerate delivery.
Genesys, CX, contact center, conversational AI or voice AI expertise.

Responsibilities

Build, lead and develop the FDE team by setting goals, career paths, feedback cycles and a culture of ownership, urgency, accountability and customer focus.
Establish and review engineering standards for code, prompts, agent design, testing, evaluation and production readiness.
Develop capacity and staffing models to assign FDE resources to high-value engagements and balance bespoke work with scalable offerings.
Hire, onboard, coach and retain high-caliber Forward Deployed Engineers.
Own delivery from use case definition through prototype, live testing, production and optimization for strategic customer engagements.
Partner with AI Sales Specialists, Account Teams, Pre-Sales, other FDE leaders and Customer Success to prioritize use cases, define business outcomes, establish measurable success criteria and resource opportunities appropriately.
Serve as an escalation point and build trusted relationships with customer CIOs, CTOs, digital leaders and CX leaders.
Improve prototype-to-production conversion through KPIs, production-readiness frameworks, evaluation pipelines, guardrails and operational handoff models.
Create repeatable delivery methodologies, playbooks and engagement models.
Package proven skills, agents, prompts, integrations, evaluations and deployment patterns into reusable assets and reference architectures.
Promote AI-native development and adoption of coding agents and AI-assisted workflows to improve team velocity.
Contribute to lighthouse AI wins and referenceable customer stories.
Translate field learnings into product requirements and work with Product and Engineering to remove production blockers and influence the roadmap.
Collaborate with AI Sales Specialist and Pre-Sales leadership on engagement triggers, target accounts, scoping and positioning of FDE-led offerings, and identify expansion opportunities.
Align with peer leaders across FDE, Pre-Sales, AI Architecture and Services on strategy, responsibilities, revenue targets and adoption targets.
Establish metrics and executive reporting for time-to-value, production milestones, adoption, customer satisfaction, AI-influenced ACV, asset reuse and team utilization.
Contribute to scoping and commercial and IP considerations for co-developed solutions, balancing customer value with strategic investment.
Stay hands-on by reviewing architectures and stepping into critical customer moments when needed.
Travel regularly to customer sites and team events as required by engagements.