Forward Deployed Engineering Manager

We're hiring a Manager to lead our Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) team in Customer Engineering. You build a healthy, high-trust team and make sure it delivers deepset's AI Platform into enterprise and public sector production environments, on target and on quality. You came up close to the work and still go deep when it matters.

Responsibilities

Own team health and culture across the four FDE profiles (Advisory, Builder, Operating, Support): a safe space where hard questions are welcome and engineers share patterns instead of working in silos; Run strong 1:1s and career conversations so every FDE knows where they stand and how to grow; Build the hiring and onboarding pipeline for a remote-first, async-heavy team; Clear blockers fast, and escalate the ones you can't resolve before they become delivery risks; Staff the right FDE profile to the right engagement and deliver against your team's utilization targets, protecting against both burnout and idle capacity; Hold the technical bar: review architecture and solution decisions across RAG pipelines, retrieval quality, deployment topology, and production operations; Deliver engagements on scope and on plan, follow our delivery processes, and own resolution of customer escalations; Partner with the Delivery Lead and Value Engineers on scope, feasibility, and staffing, with clear ownership at each handoff; Feed field insight to Product and Engineering, and build reusable patterns that reduce custom work

Requirements

Experience leading customer-facing engineering, professional services, or delivery teams in enterprise software, AI, or infrastructure; Strong coaching instincts: you develop engineers and build high-trust teams; Technical depth to hold the bar: RAG (retrieval, embeddings, re-ranking, evaluation), cloud and self-hosted deployments, model optimization, APIs, integrations, and IAM/security fundamentals; Commercial awareness: you understand how scope, staffing, and execution affect utilization, revenue, and margin; Clear, written and verbal communication with technical and executive audiences, and comfort with ambiguity in a remote-first setup

Nice to have

Experience running services or delivery inside a SaaS or platform company navigating the move to enterprise and self-hosted deployments; Experience with OKR frameworks and squad-based delivery organizations; Familiarity with agent-based systems, LLM platforms, and AI-native engineering tooling

Benefits

Remote-first setup with flexible hours & tech of your choice; 30 days vacation + extra days for family sick leave; Competitive salary & stock options for every team member; Monthly sports & mental health support allowance with Oliva; Annual learning & development budget; Monthly team socials & in-person meetups; Dog-friendly Berlin HQ