Principal Forward Deployed Engineering Manager

UiPath•Bellevue, WA

21h•Hybrid

About The Position

As a Principal Forward Deployed Engineer Manager, you will lead and scale a team of senior technical experts who define technical strategy across major customer engagements and deliver lighthouse implementations with strategic customers. You'll build and develop a high-performing FDE organization, establish standards for how your teams operate, influence product direction through aggregated field insights, and serve as both a people leader and executive technical advisor to customers and internal stakeholders. This role uniquely combines engineering leadership with deep technical fluency in AI and automation, strategic customer engagement, and organizational scaling. Unlike traditional engineering managers who oversee product development teams, Principal FDE Managers lead engineers embedded in customer environments, balancing team development, delivery excellence, and customer outcomes simultaneously. You'll shape how your team delivers agentic automation solutions while owning hiring, performance, career development, and the operational health of a team responsible for UiPath's most strategic customer engagements.

Requirements

10+ years of software engineering experience, including significant experience leading customer-facing technical teams in enterprise software environments
Deep expertise in LLM systems, including prompt engineering, evaluation methodologies, and production deployment of agentic workflows at scale
Strong proficiency in Python and/or TypeScript, with hands-on experience guiding the development of production-grade AI applications
Proven track record of leading technical strategy, driving execution across complex multi-system integrations, and delivering measurable business outcomes for enterprise customers
Experience managing teams responsible for lighthouse implementations, strategic accounts, or high-impact technical initiatives
Strong people leadership skills, including hiring, mentoring, performance management, and developing senior technical talent
Track record of establishing technical standards, delivery best practices, and operational rigor across teams
Willingness to travel to customer sites (up to 30–40%) and lead engagements directly in customer environments

Nice To Haves

Experience with enterprise automation platforms.
Background in machine learning, including familiarity with custom ML models, document understanding, or AI Center-style deployments
Familiarity with multiple LLM providers such as OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini, and others, with an understanding of model selection tradeoffs across enterprise use cases
Experience with orchestration platforms, workflow engines, and integration architectures in complex enterprise environments
Track record of driving technical adoption and delivery excellence across customer implementations in enterprise software

Responsibilities

Recruit, hire, and retain top-tier Forward Deployed Engineering talent, building a team with the technical depth and customer acumen required for strategic engagements.
Develop Senior and Principal FDEs through coaching, career planning, and targeted stretch opportunities that prepare them for technical and leadership progression.
Set clear performance expectations, deliver candid feedback, and manage performance issues with fairness and rigor.
Foster a team culture that values technical excellence, customer empathy, rapid learning, and collaborative problem-solving.
Create development paths that accommodate both individual contributor and management tracks, ensuring the team retains its strongest technical talent.
Set the technical direction for the team across major customer engagements, ensuring Senior and Principal FDEs apply strong judgment in AI system design, multi-agent orchestration, and enterprise deployment.
Translate customer and field learnings into actionable input for Product and Engineering, while driving adoption of reference architectures, reusable delivery patterns, and engineering standards across the team.
Establish consistent practices for agent engineering, prompt management, LLM evaluation, and production operations, and guide the team in balancing experimentation with standardization as new technologies emerge.
Ensure solutions delivered by the team meet strong standards for performance, cost efficiency, security, and operational sustainability across customer environments.
Set and uphold the technical standards by which the team delivers AI systems, agentic workflows, and production-ready customer solutions.
Guide lighthouse engagements through strong technical oversight and escalation support, while driving cross-functional improvements that increase delivery quality, repeatability, and scale.
Convert patterns emerging across customer work into reusable practices, stronger operating mechanisms, and informed product feedback.
Ensure field learnings are captured and shared in ways that strengthen the broader FDE organization and elevate the team’s technical capabilities.
Set customer technology strategy across a portfolio of strategic engagements, aligning delivery to business transformation goals and measurable value realization.
Guide teams through lighthouse implementations that validate emerging agentic capabilities and scale successful patterns across accounts.
Synthesize field learnings into structured product and roadmap input, shaping how UiPath evolves to meet customer and market needs.
Develop senior executive relationships with key customers, serving as a trusted advisor on AI, automation, and transformation priorities.
Drive consistent methods for measuring, articulating, and expanding customer business impact.
Partner across Product, Engineering, Sales, and Customer Success to resolve recurring customer challenges.
Drive cross-functional collaboration across teams, regions, and technical disciplines to align execution on strategic customer priorities and lighthouse programs.
Connect field execution with Product and Engineering, ensuring customer insight is translated into product direction and stronger co-innovation outcomes.
Coach Senior FDEs and emerging leaders in technical leadership, architectural problem-solving, and executive customer engagement.
Establish alignment on technical standards, delivery approaches, and field strategy across teams.
Provide clear upward and lateral leadership, surfacing risks early and stepping in to resolve execution and technical issues.