Head of Forward Deployment Engineering

Nebius Group

Lead a growing team of Forward Deployed Engineers at Nebius, establishing operations for the next scaling phase. Collaborate on enterprise strategy and engage with major customers for impactful tech initiatives.

Posted 7/2/2026full-timeNew York City • New York • 🇺🇸 United StatesLead💰 $230,000 - $310,000 per yearWebsite

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

Distributed SystemsPython

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Define and evolve the FDE organization's vision, operating model, execution playbooks, resourcing strategy, and quarterly priorities.
Lead, mentor, and scale an existing team of Forward Deployed Engineers by raising the bar for hiring, technical excellence, execution, and customer impact.
Own the technical strategy for Tavily's most strategic enterprise accounts, from discovery and solution design through POCs, production rollout, and expansion.
Partner closely with Sales and Customer Success to shape technical strategy for strategic accounts, accelerate enterprise adoption, and drive expansion opportunities.
Serve as the senior technical voice with executive stakeholders, including CTOs, VPs of Engineering, founders, and technical decision-makers.
Stay hands-on by leading strategic customer engagements and building reference implementations, retrieval pipelines, agentic systems, production integrations, and technical prototypes on the Tavily API.
Support select high-impact technical initiatives where senior field expertise is needed, including strategic customer, product, or partner-facing work.
Build scalable internal assets, including playbooks, demo environments, documentation, reference architectures, tooling, and reusable templates.
Synthesize customer patterns and technical feedback into clear product and engineering roadmap recommendations.
Represent Tavily externally in executive customer conversations, strategic engagements, developer communities, conferences, and technical content.

Requirements

What you’ll need

10+ years of software engineering experience, including significant experience in customer-facing technical roles such as Forward Deployed Engineer, Solutions Architect, Solutions Engineer, or Sales Engineer.
4+ years building or leading customer-facing engineering teams, including hiring, coaching, performance management, and organizational scaling.
Strong hands-on engineering ability in Python, APIs, distributed systems, and modern software architecture.
Deep experience designing and building production AI systems, including LLM applications, agentic workflows, retrieval architectures, evaluation systems, and the infrastructure required to operate them reliably at scale.
Strong familiarity with the modern AI application stack, including agent orchestration frameworks, retrieval infrastructure, evaluation tooling, and production deployment patterns.
Proven track record leading the technical side of enterprise engagements from initial architecture discussions through successful production deployment and expansion.
Strong business and commercial judgment, with the ability to balance customer outcomes, engineering investment, and company priorities when making technical and organizational decisions.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills across executive, technical, and developer audiences.
A builder's mindset with the ability to create structure, operating rhythms, and scalable playbooks in fast-moving, ambiguous environments.
Based in New York City or willing to relocate, or able to maintain a strong presence with the team and customers.

Benefits

Comp & perks

Health Insurance: 100% company-paid medical, dental, and vision coverage for employees and families.
401(k) Plan: Up to 4% company match with immediate vesting.
Parental Leave: 20 weeks paid for primary caregivers, 12 weeks for secondary caregivers.
Remote Work Reimbursement: Up to $85/month for mobile and internet.
Disability & Life Insurance: Company-paid short-term, long-term, and life insurance coverage.

ATS Keywords

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Applicant Tracking System Keywords

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Hard Skills & Tools

PythonAPIsDistributed SystemsModern Software ArchitectureProduction AI SystemsLLM ApplicationsAgentic WorkflowsRetrieval ArchitecturesEvaluation SystemsInfrastructure for Reliable Operation

Soft Skills

LeadershipCoachingPerformance ManagementBusiness and Commercial JudgmentBuilder's Mindset