Senior Director, Forward Deployed Engineering, Americas

C3.ai•Redwood City, CA

2d•Onsite

About The Position

C3 AI is seeking a Senior Director of Forward Deployed Engineering, Americas, based in Redwood City, California, to lead and scale our customer-facing engineering organization across the region. This role reports to the Vice President of Forward Deployed Engineering and will lead multiple Forward Deployed Engineering pods, with 5-10 FDE Managers and senior technical leaders reporting directly into the role and total organizational accountability for approximately 50-100 engineers across the Americas region. The Senior Director will be responsible for the performance, development, deployment, and technical quality of the Americas FDE organization. This leader will work closely with Industry Solution Leaders, Sales, Product, Platform, Engineering, and customer executives to ensure C3 AI teams are solving the right problems, delivering production-quality applications, and creating measurable customer value. The ideal candidate is a proven engineering leader who has built and managed highly technical organizations, remains credible and hands-on with software and architecture, and is equally comfortable reviewing code, coaching engineering managers, leading a customer escalation, or discussing delivery and organizational priorities with senior executives.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or another technical discipline.
12+ years of professional software engineering or highly technical product development experience.
7+ years of experience leading highly technical engineering organizations, including significant experience managing engineering managers or other technical leaders.
Demonstrated experience building, scaling, and operating customer-facing engineering teams.
Deep understanding of modern software engineering, including full-stack application development, distributed systems, data platforms, APIs, cloud infrastructure, and enterprise software architecture.
Demonstrated experience delivering complex enterprise software into production environments.
Strong technical judgment with the ability to review architecture, evaluate engineering tradeoffs, identify technical risk, and challenge engineering teams constructively.
Proven track record recruiting, developing, retaining, and managing high-performing engineering teams.
Experience managing organizational performance, including goal setting, coaching, performance management, succession planning, organizational design, and span of control.
Demonstrated ability to operate across a portfolio of concurrent customer engagements and make effective staffing and prioritization decisions.
Excellent executive communication skills with the ability to engage effectively with senior customer and internal stakeholders.
Strong customer orientation and demonstrated ability to lead through ambiguity, technical complexity, and high-pressure customer situations.
Ability to travel as required.
Candidates must be authorized to work in the United States without the need for current or future company sponsorship.

Nice To Haves

Prior experience in a forward-deployed engineering, customer engineering, solutions engineering, field engineering, or similar customer-facing technical organization.
Experience leading organizations responsible for both software engineering and direct customer delivery.
Hands-on software development experience with Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, Java, or similar languages.
Experience with modern web application frameworks such as React, Angular, or Vue.
Experience with AI/ML applications, enterprise data platforms, distributed systems, cloud infrastructure, or large-scale data processing.
Experience with Git, CI/CD, automated testing, observability, and modern software development practices.
Experience supporting enterprise customers in complex industries such as manufacturing, energy, utilities, high-tech, life sciences, financial services, or government.
Experience working closely with product and engineering organizations to translate field requirements into reusable product capabilities.
Advanced degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical discipline.

Responsibilities

Lead the Americas Forward Deployed Engineering organization.
Manage, develop, and scale multiple FDE pods and their managers, with accountability for engineering performance, customer outcomes, talent development, and organizational health across the region.
Own regional technical execution. Ensure Forward Deployed Engineering teams consistently design, build, deploy, and scale production-quality enterprise AI applications on the C3 AI Platform.
Lead and develop engineering managers. Establish clear expectations for FDE Managers; coach them on technical leadership, people management, staffing, performance management, and customer execution; and build a strong pipeline of future engineering leaders.
Set the operating model for the region. Define how FDE teams are organized, staffed, deployed, and managed across customer accounts, balancing customer priorities, technical fit, capacity, development opportunities, and business needs.
Maintain accountability for customer delivery. Review engagement health, technical progress, risks, staffing, and delivery commitments across the Americas portfolio and intervene when projects require additional leadership or technical direction.
Serve as the senior technical escalation point. Engage directly with strategic customers, senior engineers, architects, and executives on complex technical challenges, solution reviews, production readiness, and critical delivery situations.
Establish and enforce engineering standards. Drive consistent standards for software architecture, application design, code quality, testing, security, scalability, maintainability, and production readiness across customer deployments.
Stay technically engaged. Maintain sufficient hands-on technical depth to review architecture and code, challenge technical decisions, troubleshoot complex problems, and directly support critical customer engagements when needed.
Build and retain a high-performing organization. Partner with Talent Acquisition and FDE leadership to recruit exceptional engineers and managers, maintain a high hiring bar, develop technical talent, manage performance, and create compelling career paths.
Partner with Industry Solution Leaders. Ensure strong alignment between domain leadership and engineering execution, with clear accountability for translating customer problems and business objectives into technically sound, scalable solutions.
Partner with Sales, Product, Platform, and Engineering leadership. Support strategic opportunities, account planning, solution design, product feedback, technical escalations, and prioritization across the Americas customer portfolio.
Drive continuous improvement. Identify recurring technical and delivery patterns across customer engagements and translate field experience into improved engineering practices, reusable solution patterns, training, and product capabilities.
Communicate with senior leadership. Provide clear, actionable visibility into organizational performance, customer delivery, staffing, technical risk, hiring, and areas requiring executive support.
Travel to customer and C3 AI locations as required.