Lead Forward Deployed Engineer

NTT DATA Services • Plano, TX

3d • $155,700 - $259,500

About The Position

The Lead Forward Deployed Engineer (Lead FDE) is a senior, customer-facing leader who owns the outcome thread across complex and strategic customer engagements. Working directly with executive, business, and technical stakeholders, the Lead FDE turns ambiguous priorities into measurable outcomes, establishes the path from opportunity to production value, and brings together Forward Deployed, product, engineering, transformation, and platform capabilities around customer needs.

The Lead FDE combines deep expertise in a relevant specialist discipline with broad understanding of enterprise AI, technology platforms, industry context, commercial models, and company and partner capabilities. They use judgement across domain, technology, client relationships, and outcome leadership to shape high-impact opportunities, determine the appropriate delivery route, and guide customers through material investment and delivery decisions.

The role provides continuity across the customer lifecycle, from discovery and validation through production delivery, adoption, value measurement, and continuous improvement. The Lead FDE orchestrates specialist FDEs and scalable delivery teams, maintains alignment between customer outcomes and technical execution, and intervenes when assumptions, priorities, risks, or delivery decisions threaten intended value. The role does not replace accountable customer ownership, delivery leadership, or managed service responsibilities.

Operating independently in high-ambiguity enterprise environments, the Lead FDE leads complex multi-domain engagements, develops trusted senior relationships, mentors and assures other FDEs, contributes to strategic pursuits, and converts field learning into reusable assets, improved methods, and stronger company capabilities. The role may require work at customer sites, company offices, or hybrid delivery locations depending on engagement needs.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, Data Science, Business Technology, or a related discipline, or an equivalent combination of education and significant relevant professional experience.
• Typically 10+ years of relevant experience in AI or software engineering, solution architecture, consulting, customer engineering, product, industry transformation, technology delivery, or related disciplines, including substantial senior customer-facing responsibility.
• Proven experience leading complex enterprise engagements and building trusted relationships with executive, business, technical, and operational stakeholders.
• Demonstrated success as a senior Forward Deployed practitioner, customer engineering leader, solution leader, or equivalent across multiple complex engagements.
• Experience leading ambiguous opportunities from discovery and problem framing through evidence, investment decisions, production shaping, adoption, and measurable impact.
• Experience directing prototypes, proof points, experiments, and solution validation while focusing effort on assumptions critical to value and feasibility.
• Experience shaping and assuring enterprise solutions involving architecture, AI, data, integration, security, governance, infrastructure, deployment, and production constraints.
• Experience applying industry, business, or functional context to customer workflows, operating models, KPIs, value drivers, and transformation decisions.
• Experience connecting technical and delivery decisions to customer outcomes, adoption, value realisation, commercial considerations, and scalability.
• Experience orchestrating multidisciplinary teams across product, engineering, platform, industry, transformation, architecture, delivery, operations, and account functions.
• Experience evaluating build, buy, reuse, product, partner, platform, and infrastructure options without defaulting to a single solution path.
• Experience operating independently with senior stakeholders, exercising sound commercial and technical judgement, resolving conflict, and maintaining momentum through ambiguity.
• Experience creating or scaling reusable patterns, reference architectures, playbooks, methodologies, accelerators, product improvements, or other assets from field engagements.
• Demonstrated experience mentoring FDEs or FDE Candidates, providing peer assurance, and contributing to capability standards, accreditation, or communities of practice.
• Deep domain and business awareness, including customer strategy, workflows, economics, operating constraints, industry context, and business-value measures.
• Strong technical credibility across enterprise solution architecture, AI engineering, data, integration, cloud and infrastructure platforms, security, and production technology delivery.
• Broad applied understanding of artificial intelligence, generative AI, agentic systems, RAG, automation, model and tool integration, and emerging AI technologies in enterprise transformation.
• Strong understanding of production AI considerations, including evaluation, security, privacy, Responsible AI, observability, AgentOps, FinOps, resilience, service transition, and operational readiness.
• Exceptional client emotional intelligence, executive communication, consulting, facilitation, stakeholder management, and relationship-building skills.
• Strong systems thinking, analytical judgement, problem-solving, experimentation, and evidence-based decision-making capabilities across business and technical domains.
• Deep working expertise in at least one relevant specialist area, such as AI engineering, architecture, industry, transformation, product, data, or AI infrastructure, with sufficient breadth to lead multidisciplinary engagements.
• Broad knowledge of relevant company and partner platforms, products, accelerators, implementation methods, commercial offers, and reusable assets, and judgement about their application.
• Ability to rapidly understand unfamiliar domain context, including processes, terminology, regulation, data flows, organisational dynamics, user roles, constraints, and business metrics.
• Strong commercial judgement connecting solution choices to business value, risk, cost, margin, time to value, adoption, delivery capacity, and the appropriate commercial and delivery model.
• Advanced outcome leadership: establish measurable outcomes, challenge assumptions, prioritise evidence, align stakeholders, and drive Build, Iterate, Route, Scale, or Stop decisions.
• Strong reuse, product-feedback, and portfolio mindset, distinguishing customer-specific needs from patterns, assets, and platform improvements suitable for standardisation and scaling.
• Ability to communicate complex concepts and trade-offs clearly to executive, domain, business, engineering, architecture, operational, commercial, and risk stakeholders.
• Ability to operate independently in high-ambiguity situations, maintain momentum across competing priorities, challenge constructively, and make sound decisions with incomplete information.
• Ability to influence senior technical and non-technical stakeholders across organisational boundaries without formal authority and align multiple teams around one outcome.
• Strong leadership, collaboration, mentoring, coaching, and knowledge-sharing skills, with commitment to developing other FDEs and creating scalable customer and practice capability.

Nice To Haves

• Relevant industry certifications in cloud technologies, solution architecture, data, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, agile delivery, industry domains, or related disciplines. Certifications support but do not replace demonstrated Forward Deployed leadership capability and experience.

Responsibilities

• Partner with executive, business, and technical stakeholders to define strategic objectives, priority workflows, measurable outcomes, and necessary decisions.
• Lead complex discovery, assessment, and solution-shaping engagements, turning ambiguous priorities into validated opportunities and delivery decisions.
• Establish and maintain engagement outcome frameworks, including ownership, baselines, target measures, assumptions, dependencies, and progression evidence.
• Direct rapid prototyping, proof points, experiments, and demonstrations, focusing technical effort on assumptions most critical to value, adoption, and feasibility.
• Provide senior technical and solution judgement across AI, data, integration, architecture, security, privacy, Responsible AI, operational readiness, infrastructure, cost, and scalability.
• Shape strategic opportunities into production-ready work, including architecture direction, backlog, dependencies, acceptance criteria, estimates, governance, and mobilisation for scalable delivery.
• Build trusted executive, business, and technical relationships; simplify complexity, challenge constructively, and guide material customer decisions.
• Orchestrate specialist Forward Deployed practitioners and teams across industry, transformation, AI Studio, product, AI Factory, architecture, engineering, delivery, and operations around customer outcomes.
• Lead resolution of complex business, technical, operational, and organisational challenges using structured problem-solving, evidence, sound judgement, and appropriate escalation.
• Identify, qualify, and prioritise high-value opportunities based on domain context, customer strategy, technology capability, feasibility, adoption requirements, and measurable business impact.
• Recommend the appropriate delivery route, including AI Studio, company products, AI Factory, transformation services, partner capabilities, reuse, further validation, or stopping the work.
• Maintain executive-level outcome stewardship during delivery and operation, validating decisions, assumptions, adoption signals, realised value, and whether work should be optimised, scaled, redirected, or stopped.
• Provide engagement-level assurance for Forward Deployed work, reviewing quality, customer readiness, production shaping, reuse, and transition into scalable delivery models.
• Capture field intelligence, customer signals, product feedback, implementation learning, reusable patterns, and recurring constraints; translate them into improvements to products, platforms, offers, standards, and delivery methods.
• Develop FDE capability through mentoring, coaching, peer review, Candidate residency, accreditation input, knowledge sharing, and reusable playbooks and assets.

Benefits

• Medical insurance
• Dental insurance
• Vision insurance
• Flexible spending or health savings account
• Life and AD&D insurance
• Short- and long-term disability coverage
• Paid time off
• Employee assistance
• 401(k) program with company match
• Additional voluntary or legally required benefits
• The position may be eligible for incentive compensation based on individual and/or company performance, except when hired as a temporary position.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior