Senior Engineering Manager, Forward Deployed Engineering

Handshake•San Francisco, CA

About The Position

Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) is the engineering team that unblocks high-priority, customer-facing work for Handshake AI’s most strategic partners. FDEs are technical builders: they ship end-to-end solutions in close collaboration with researchers, operators, and partner technical teams. As the Senior Engineering Manager, Forward Deployed Engineering, you will lead and scale a team of FDEs deployed to our most important accounts and projects. You’ll build the foundations of the org (operating rhythms, prioritization, quality bar, and career ladders) while staying close enough to the work to guide technical decision-making and execution. This role is ideal for a leader who can translate technical tradeoffs into business decisions, build trusted relationships across stakeholders, and create structure in an ambiguous, fast-moving environment.

Requirements

8+ years of software engineering experience.
3+ years in a customer-facing or field engineering role (e.g., forward deployed, solutions engineering, field engineering, customer-embedded product development).
Experience managing teams of 10+ engineers, including managing managers and senior ICs.
Proven track record managing and growing high-performing FDE and/or solutions engineering teams.
Ability to translate technical tradeoffs into business decisions; comfortable presenting options and recommendations to both technical and executive audiences.
Strong stakeholder management skills; can build trust, communicate clearly, and drive alignment across ambiguous problem spaces.
Strong prioritization and capacity planning skills.
Demonstrated ability to build process and structure in fast-moving environments.

Nice To Haves

Deep understanding of distributed systems and backend architecture.
Experience partnering with operations-heavy organizations.
Experience building repeatable platforms from bespoke customer solutions.
Experience with AI/ML product integrations and production reliability challenges.

Responsibilities

Manage and grow a team of Forward Deployed Engineers working across multiple high-priority customer engagements.
Serve as the senior technical and delivery partner to researchers and internal partners at the labs and teams we work with.
Build the operating system for intake, triage, prioritization, capacity planning, and execution across competing requests.
Drive alignment across Engineering, Product, Research, and Operations on what gets built and why; provide thoughtful, well-reasoned pushback when needed.
Ensure customer-facing solutions are built with strong engineering fundamentals: reliability, observability, security, documentation, and maintainability.
Develop senior ICs and people managers; set expectations, run performance management, and build a high-performing, inclusive culture.
Establish scalable processes so forward-deployed work consistently turns into durable product/platform improvements.