Manager, Field Operations - Industrial Sectors

FieldAI • Irvine, CA

3d

About The Position

Field AI is seeking a Manager, Field Operations within our Industrials vertical to lead and scale our growing team of Field Applications Engineers. This team sits at the intersection of our customers, robotic platforms, autonomy software, and product development teams. It is responsible for successful field deployments and ensuring our technology delivers measurable value in demanding operational environments. In this role, you will manage the strategic direction, day-to-day performance, and development of our Field Applications Engineering team while building the operational processes, organizational structure, and global capabilities needed to support Field AI’s continued growth. You will oversee customer deployments from technical preparation through field execution, help allocate resources across competing priorities, and establish consistent standards for operational readiness, safety, quality, and customer communication. The ideal candidate combines strong people leadership with hands-on technical judgment and field operations experience. You are comfortable working directly with Forward Deployed engineers, Field Application Engineers, Technical leads and customer stakeholders and you know how to create structure in a fast-moving, high-growth environment.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in robotics, engineering, computer science, or a related technical discipline, or equivalent practical experience.
• Significant experience in field applications engineering, robotics deployment, systems integration, technical operations, or a comparable customer-facing engineering function.
• Demonstrated experience leading, developing and managing technical field teams.
• Experience building or scaling field operations across multiple customers, sites, or geographic regions.
• Strong understanding of complex hardware and software systems, ideally involving robotics, autonomous systems, industrial automation, technical infrastructure or other deployed advanced technology.
• Proven ability to manage multiple concurrent deployments and balance customer urgency, technical complexity, staffing constraints, and business priorities.
• Strong troubleshooting and systems-thinking skills, with the ability to lead teams through ambiguous and high-pressure field situations.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to communicate effectively with technical teams, frontline operators, customer executives, and internal leadership.
• Strong organizational and operational discipline, including experience developing processes, documentation, training programs, and performance metrics.
• Willingness and ability to travel domestically and internationally as business needs require.

Nice To Haves

• Experience deploying robotic or autonomous systems in challenging, complex environments.
• Experience supporting customers in industries such as energy, manufacturing, construction, mining, agriculture, logistics, aerospace, defense, or infrastructure.
• Familiarity with Linux, networking, sensors, robotic hardware, autonomy software, and system-level diagnostics.
• Experience managing distributed or international technical teams.
• Experience operating within a high-growth technology company where products and processes are evolving rapidly.
• Knowledge of industrial site safety, commissioning practices, and customer acceptance procedures.
• Experience supporting the transition from early-stage pilots and demonstrations to repeatable, production-scale deployments.

Responsibilities

• Lead, coach, and develop a team of Field Applications Engineers responsible for deploying and supporting Field AI’s technology at customer sites.
• Scale the Field Applications Engineering organization to support an expanding portfolio of customers, robotic platforms, applications, and geographic regions.
• Establish clear team roles, performance expectations, career paths, training programs, and technical competency standards.
• Recruit, onboard, and develop new Field Applications Engineers as the organization grows globally.
• Plan staffing and allocate field engineering resources across customer deployments, demonstrations, pilots, and production programs.
• Ensure deployments are properly scoped, staffed, documented, and prepared before teams arrive at customer sites.
• Develop repeatable processes, playbooks, tools, and operating standards for deployment readiness, commissioning, testing, troubleshooting, customer acceptance, and ongoing support.
• Partner with customers to understand their workflows, technical environments, operational requirements, safety standards, and success criteria.
• Serve as an escalation point for complex technical, operational, and customer-facing issues during deployments.
• Work closely with Product, Engineering, Program Management, Sales, Solutions, and Customer Success teams to ensure alignment throughout the customer lifecycle.
• Create effective feedback loops between field teams and product development teams, translating deployment insights into actionable product and engineering priorities.
• Track and improve key operational metrics, including deployment readiness, time to commissioning, system performance, issue resolution, customer satisfaction, and team utilization.
• Promote a strong culture of safety, accountability, technical excellence, professionalism, and continuous improvement.
• Develop a global operating model that accounts for regional hiring, travel, training, logistics, customer support, and local operating requirements.
• Represent Field AI professionally with customer engineers, site leaders, executives, technology partners, and other stakeholders.
• Maintain sufficient hands-on familiarity with Field AI’s technology and deployment processes to provide credible technical guidance and leadership in the field.
• Travel to customer locations as needed to support critical deployments, coach team members, and strengthen customer relationships.

Benefits

• This is a highly visible leadership role with meaningful impact across our customers, products, and organization.
• You will work alongside exceptional engineers and industry leaders while helping shape the operating model that brings the next generation of robotics into the real world.

What This Job Offers

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