Manager, Forward Deployed Engineering

The shape of it

In the posting’s own words

As the first FDE Manager, you'll own the team that sits at the frontier of enterprise AI deployment. You'll hire and develop a high-performing team of FDEs, set the technical and operational bar for customer engagements, and build the playbooks that turn one-off successes into repeatable patterns. You'll work hand-in-hand with Engagement Managers who own delivery logistics and stakeholder management, while you ensure your team is shipping quality code, growing technically, and representing Anthropic at the highest level in customer environments.

What it asks for · 7

• 10+ years of experience in software engineering, solutions architecture, or a technical customer-facing role such as forward deployed engineering or consulting.
• 2+ years of people management experience within a services/post-sales/FDE organization with a track record of hiring, developing, and retaining strong engineers.
• Experience building organizations from 0->1, not just inheriting an existing one.
• Experience working directly with enterprise customers on technical implementations, including comfort navigating complex organizational dynamics.
• Executive presence with the ability to move fluidly between strategic conversations with senior stakeholders and hands-on debugging sessions with engineers.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills. You can translate technical complexity into clear narratives for diverse audiences.
• Genuine excitement about building something new and defining what great looks like for a team that doesn't yet exist.

What the job covers

• Hire, develop, and retain a world-class team of Forward Deployed Engineers. Set a high bar for technical talent and customer instincts.
• Conduct regular 1:1s, provide technical mentorship, and invest in the career growth of each team member. Create an environment where FDEs do the best work of their careers.
• Staff and oversee customer engagements across your team's portfolio, making resource allocation decisions that balance customer needs, team development, and business priorities.
• Collaborate with account teams and Engagement Managers during the pre-sales process to qualify engagements, scope work, and inform statements of work.
• Review technical architectures and code produced by your FDEs, ensuring the team ships high-quality, production-ready solutions that solve real customer problems.
• Stay hands-on enough to lead technical discovery sessions, prototype solutions, and debug complex issues alongside your team when needed.
• Build repeatable playbooks, starter repositories, integration templates, and an internal knowledge base that captures what your team learns in the field.
• Define team OKRs that tie to customer success outcomes and product adoption goals. Create operational cadences — standups, retros, engagement reviews — that keep the team aligned.
• Partner with Product and Engineering to translate field insights into product improvements. Serve as the voice of the customer in internal planning.
• Travel to customer sites as needed (25-50%), particularly during engagement kickoffs and for your team's highest-priority accounts.

Tools and skills named

Words the posting leans on

• customer21×
• technical16×
• engagement12×
• product9×
• experience8×
• engineering7×
• engineers7×
• fdes7×
• building6×
• create6×
• solutions6×
• architectures5×
• directly5×
• forward deployed5×
• organizations5×
• review5×

Counted from the posting after the mission statement and the legal notices are set aside. The ones near the top are the ones a screener is looking for.

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