Sr. Director, Forward Deployed Engineering

The Sr. Director, Forward Deployed Engineering (US East) will lead Scale’s enterprise customer engagements across the Eastern United States. This role sits at the intersection of customer leadership, applied AI, and execution—owning how Scale partners with Fortune 500 executives to design, build, and deploy AI-powered systems that deliver measurable business outcomes. As a regional leader and peer to Scale’s existing Forward Deployed leadership, you will manage and grow multidisciplinary teams of applied scientists and full-stack engineers, shape how we deliver agentic AI applications in customer environments, and set the bar for executive-level customer engagement. This is a high-impact leadership role in a period of regional expansion and organizational evolution.

Responsibilities

Lead all US East enterprise customer engagements, serving as the senior technical and delivery executive for Scale’s most strategic accounts; Partner closely with Sales, Product, and Engineering leadership to support customer acquisition, expansion, and long-term success; Build and manage forward-deployed teams composed of applied scientists and full-stack software engineers, structured into customer-specific technical pods; Own end-to-end delivery execution for customer deployments, ensuring reliability, rigor, and measurable business impact; Guide teams in building production-grade, agentic AI applications for Fortune 500 enterprises; Establish and enforce an evals-first approach to customer deployments, ensuring performance, safety, and reliability standards are met; Lead senior-level technical conversations with customer executives, demonstrating Scale’s credibility as a trusted AI partner; Support technical upsell conversations by articulating architectural tradeoffs, capabilities, and future-state possibilities (with commercial ownership held by AEs); Hire, develop, and mentor forward-deployed leaders and ICs, including training teams on executive-level customer interaction and professional standards; Help shape Scale’s regional forward-deployed strategy as part of a broader global and US restructuring

Requirements

12+ years of experience in software engineering, applied ML, or AI systems, with significant leadership responsibility; Proven experience leading customer-facing technical teams delivering complex systems for large enterprise customers; Executive presence and credibility with senior Fortune 500 stakeholders, including experience navigating high-stakes technical discussions; Strong technical foundation in either applied machine learning or full-stack / distributed systems engineering (strength in one, fluency in the other); Demonstrated ability to translate ambiguous customer needs into concrete technical solutions and delivery plans; Experience partnering with sales and product teams in pre-sales, expansion, and delivery contexts; A track record of building, scaling, and managing high-performing multidisciplinary teams

Nice to have

Experience deploying generative AI or agentic systems in production enterprise environments; Background in consulting, forward-deployed engineering, or professional services for technical products; Experience building evaluation frameworks for ML or AI system performance; Prior responsibility for regional or multi-account technical leadership

Benefits

equity; comprehensive health, dental and vision coverage; retirement benefits; learning and development stipend; generous PTO; commuter stipend (may be eligible)