Staff Product Manager, Forward Deployment

BetterUp•Austin, TX

4d•$180,000 - $250,000•Hybrid

About The Position

The Staff Product Manager, Forward Deployment owns the work required to make BetterUp’s largest and most complex enterprise accounts successful after the sales demonstration. The role addresses unresolved technical, commercial, and organizational challenges, defining technical success, setting account-specific commitments and boundaries, and deciding whether an account warrants deployment. The position works alongside a squad of two to three forward deployed engineers on a small number of high-priority customer accounts, while setting practices that other squads can adopt. It does not manage people and carries no sales quota. The role is accountable for defining and documenting engagement charters, gates, commitments, and outcomes; managing senior customer relationships; and clearing technical gates on the path to customer commercial decisions. It builds customer-facing prototypes using AI and design tools, evaluates account evidence such as activation and utilization, and brings recommendations to a monthly graduation board about whether custom work should become a platform capability, convert to paid or drawdown-funded work, or be stopped. BetterUp is a hybrid company. Employees are expected to work from an office hub at least two days per week or eight days per month. US hubs include Austin, New York City, San Francisco, and the Washington, DC metro area; European hubs include London and Amsterdam. BetterUp describes its culture as focused on human transformation, personal development, coaching, and meaningful work. The team is expected to integrate AI into daily work while applying human judgment and creativity. The role offers a competitive compensation plan and the listed benefits. Base salary is $200,000–$250,000 in New York City and San Francisco, or $180,000–$225,000 in Austin and Arlington; this is base salary only and excludes equity, applicable sales bonus plans, and benefits.

Requirements

At least 7 years of experience in product management, solutions architecture, or a forward deployed role.
Several years owning technical relationships on enterprise accounts with contract values in the seven- or eight-figure range.
A record of turning around a failing or troubled account, such as one with damaged trust, a failed prior attempt, or an incumbent competitor.
Enterprise deployment experience, including working with a customer’s HRIS, handling security questionnaires and procurement, and addressing stalled rollouts or unassigned licenses.
Technical depth to read API documentation, reason about data pipelines, configure an LLM’s context and guardrails, and assess whether an approach can meet a customer’s security requirements; production coding is not required.
Credibility and communication skills with executives on both the customer and company sides, including delivering difficult news.
B2B2C experience selling to enterprise buyers while building for the people those buyers serve.
Ability to take ownership and resolve problems, exercise judgment about when to decline work, distinguish reusable platform capabilities from customer-specific builds, make decisions with incomplete information, and correct course quickly.
Ability to prototype with AI agents as a regular working method.

Nice To Haves

Expertise in organizational transformation, human transformation, or talent intelligence.
Experience as a forward deployed engineer or forward deployed product manager at a company using this model, with end-to-end ownership of an account’s technical relationship.
Solutions architecture or sales engineering experience with a desire to own implementation beyond the contract handoff.
Consulting or enterprise software implementation experience with personal accountability for deployed outcomes.
Founder or early-stage startup experience, including zero-to-one work in environments without an established playbook.
Enterprise SaaS product management experience with a strength in customer intimacy.

Responsibilities

Define technical success for complex enterprise accounts and document an engagement charter, named gates, and customer commitments.
Determine whether Forward Deployment should work on an account; identify commercial, political, or organizational blockers and escalate them to the appropriate decision-makers rather than deploying engineers on unsuitable work.
Document what the squad will build and by when, what the customer must provide or accomplish, and what the company will not build.
Manage customer relationships with senior stakeholders, including CIOs, CHROs, procurement leads, and security architects, and represent BetterUp executives in troubled accounts.
Own technical gates on the critical path to a customer’s next commercial decision; track gates cleared and deal-team-confirmed influence. The account executive owns the commercial number, and this role has no quota.
Lead a squad of two to three forward deployed engineers without managing them, and establish practices that inform how other squads work.
Build prototypes directly with tools such as Claude, Cursor, Replit, and Figma Make; adjust prompts and flows and perform data analysis without relying on an engineering ticket.
Close each engagement in writing as platform work accepted by core engineering, paid or drawdown-funded work, or work to stop; present graduation recommendations to a monthly board.
Track and own evidence, including account activation and utilization changes, deal-team-confirmed influence claims, and cross-account patterns that inform platform priorities.
Communicate what was delivered, its impact, and what went wrong to customer and internal executive audiences.

Benefits

Access to BetterUp coaching for the employee and one friend or family member.
Competitive compensation plan with opportunity for advancement.
Medical, dental, and vision insurance.
Flexible paid time off.
Federal/statutory holidays observed.
Four BetterUp Inner Workdays per year.
Five volunteer days per year.
Company-wide summer and winter breaks.
Year-round charitable contribution of the employee’s choice on behalf of BetterUp.
401(k) self contribution.