Director, Forward Deployed Engineering

Accrete • New York, NY

3d • $240,000 - $280,000 • Hybrid

About The Position

Accrete is a dual-use AI software company that licenses its Knowledge Engine Platform and Expert AI Agents to government and enterprise clients. The platform creates a unified semantic representation of an organization’s ground truth—capturing tacit domain knowledge, understanding contextual relevance, and connecting information silos—enabling expert agents to reason across complex data and support high-stakes decisions with confidence. From national security to commercial use cases, Accrete delivers mission-critical decision intelligence and automation on a single platform.

Accrete is seeking a Director, Forward Deployed Engineering to lead the function responsible for making Accrete’s platform work in complex, high-stakes customer environments. This leader will oversee the execution of forward deployed engineering across strategic deployments, ensuring that customer implementations move from discovery and prototype to stable production adoption.

This role requires a leader who can manage technical delivery at scale, guide teams through ambiguity, partner with senior customer stakeholders, and work cross-functionally with Product, Engineering, Research, Security, Deployment Strategy, Sales, and Customer Success. You will be accountable for building the operating model, delivery standards, staffing plans, and technical execution practices that allow Accrete to scale its deployment capacity across enterprise and government customers.

The ideal candidate has deep technical judgment, experience leading customer-facing engineering teams, and a track record of delivering production systems in complex environments. This role requires strong operational leadership, executive presence, and the ability to translate field realities into product and platform priorities.

Travel up to 50% may be required.

Requirements

• 10+ years of experience in software engineering, technical delivery, solutions architecture, platform engineering, or related technical functions.
• 5+ years of experience leading engineering or technical delivery teams, preferably in customer-facing, or enterprise customers.
• Proven experience leading complex end-to-end deployments of production software systems.
• Strong technical foundation across full-stack systems, cloud or on-prem infrastructure, data integrations, APIs, and enterprise software delivery.
• Experience with AI, machine learning, LLM, or data-intensive systems, with an understanding of how model behavior affects product experience and customer trust.
• Demonstrated ability to lead broad technical functions through managers, senior ICs, or cross-functional delivery teams.
• Strong executive communication skills and experience partnering with C-level, senior technical, and operational stakeholders.
• Ability to operate in ambiguous environments, make sound tradeoffs, and drive teams toward clear outcomes.
• Experience building operating models, delivery processes, team structures, and technical standards for scaling organizations.
• Strong judgment in balancing customer needs, product direction, security requirements, and engineering quality.
• Ability to travel up to 50% based on customer and deployment needs.

Nice To Haves

• Prior experience leading Forward Deployed Engineering, Solutions Engineering, Field Engineering, Deployment Engineering, or similar teams.
• Familiarity with retrieval systems, knowledge graphs, semantic search, agentic workflows, or enterprise AI platforms.
• Experience scaling a technical services or field engineering function in a high-growth startup environment.

Responsibilities

• Lead the Forward Deployed Engineering function across strategic customer deployments, ensuring successful execution from technical discovery through production rollout.
• Own planning, staffing, prioritization, and delivery governance for forward deployed engineering engagements.
• Manage and develop FDE team members, including senior individual contributors and team leads as the organization scales.
• Establish repeatable deployment practices, technical standards, playbooks, and operating mechanisms that improve delivery quality and speed.
• Partner with Deployment Strategy to translate customer needs, business workflows, and operational requirements into executable technical delivery plans.
• Collaborate with Product, Engineering, and Research to ensure field feedback informs platform capabilities, model improvements, and roadmap priorities.
• Serve as a senior technical leader in strategic customer engagements, including executive-level discussions, technical reviews, and deployment escalation management.
• Ensure deployments are designed for production adoption, measurable workflow impact, security, reliability, and long-term scalability.
• Guide teams through tradeoffs across scope, speed, quality, risk, and customer value.
• Identify delivery risks early and implement corrective actions to protect timelines, quality, and customer trust.
• Support deployments in regulated environments, including environments with complex security and infrastructure constraints.
• Build strong working relationships across internal teams to align commercial priorities, customer outcomes, and product execution.
• Define success metrics for forward deployed engineering, including production adoption, deployment velocity, reusable patterns, customer impact, and team capacity.

Benefits

• Competitive Salary: Aligned with experience and market standards
• Comprehensive Insurance: Health, dental, and vision coverage for you and your family
• 401(k) Plan: Build your financial future with our retirement savings plan
• Flexible PTO & Hybrid Work: Take time off when needed and enjoy remote flexibility per company guidelines
• Growth & Development: Access professional learning opportunities and career advancement support
• Onsite Perks: Enjoy catered lunches, snacks, and a fully stocked kitchen
• Team Bonding: Company-sponsored happy hours and social events to connect and unwind

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Director
• Education Level: No Education Listed