Head Of Forward Deployment Engineering (AI)

TL;DR

Head of Forward Deployment Engineering (AI): Leading the technical execution of strategic customer initiatives for an AI-powered search engine with an accent on RAG and agentic systems. Focus on building the FDE operating model, scaling the team, and designing production-ready AI retrieval pipelines.

Location: Remote within the USA, with a requirement for regular presence in New York City or willingness to relocate.

Salary: $208,000 - $261,000 USD (Base)

Company

Nebius is building a full-stack AI cloud platform, and its product Tavily provides a specialized search engine for AI agents to power RAG and real-time reasoning.

What you will do

• Define and evolve the Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) organization's vision, operating model, and resourcing strategy.
• Lead and scale a team of FDEs, managing hiring, coaching, and technical excellence.
• Own technical strategy for strategic enterprise accounts from discovery and POCs to production rollout.
• Build reference implementations, retrieval pipelines, and agentic systems using the Tavily API.
• Collaborate with Sales, Customer Success, and Product teams to align the roadmap with customer needs.
• Represent the company at conferences and in developer communities.

Requirements

• 10+ years of software engineering experience, with significant time in customer-facing technical roles (Solutions Architect/Engineer).
• 4+ years of experience leading and scaling customer-facing engineering teams.
• Must be based in the US or able to maintain a strong presence in New York City.
• Strong hands-on expertise in Python, APIs, and distributed systems.
• Deep experience building production AI systems, including LLMs, agentic workflows, and retrieval architectures.
• Proven track record of leading enterprise engagements through to production deployment.

Nice to have

• Previous experience leading a Professional Services or Solutions Architecture organization.
• Open-source contributions to AI infrastructure or agent frameworks.
• Domain expertise in financial services, legal, or enterprise SaaS.
• Experience speaking at AI/developer conferences.

Culture & Benefits

• 100% company-paid medical, dental, and vision insurance for employees and families.
• 401(k) plan with up to 4% immediate company match.
• Generous parental leave (20 weeks for primary, 12 for secondary caregivers).
• Monthly remote work reimbursement for mobile and internet.
• Company-paid short-term, long-term, and life insurance.