Director, Forward Deployed Engineer

In this role, you'll make an impact in the following ways:  

• Lead a portfolio of FDE engagements across business and platform domains; set priorities, allocate engineering capacity, and ensure engagements are scoped to deliver measurable value within time-boxed windows. 
• Serve as the senior technical voice in discovery with executive sponsors and business leaders; translate ambiguous, high-stakes opportunities into feasible, production-ready delivery plans. 
• Own and evolve the FDE playbook: define discovery-to-production standards, engagement entry and exit criteria, handoff protocols, and working norms that govern how the team operates. 
• Drive the reuse-first mandate across the FDE team: establish patterns for when to build, extend, or standardize; ensure field learnings are converted into firm-wide reference architectures and platform contributions. 
• Set quality and governance standards for the FDE function: secure-by-default practices, observability, testability, and operational readiness expectations applied consistently across all engagements. 
• Define the institutionalization model for forward deployment: ensure every engagement ends with a clear handoff, documented ownership, and a capable owning team — not a dependency on FDE. 
• Represent the FDE function to architecture, control, security, compliance, and senior technology leadership; shape firm-wide AI and platform strategy based on production delivery evidence. 
• Identify capability gaps and platform investment opportunities surfaced through FDE field work; translate these into actionable recommendations for platform and engineering leadership. 
• Build and grow the FDE team: recruit, develop, and retain senior engineers; set a high technical bar and a culture of disciplined, evidence-backed delivery.
• Stay at the frontier of AI, platform engineering, and regulated delivery practices; bring that knowledge back into the function and the broader technology organization

To be successful in this role, we're seeking the following: 

• Basic Qualifications Bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering, or a related discipline, or equivalent work experience required; advanced degree is beneficial. 
• 14+ years of software development and technical leadership experience, including direct accountability for production systems and cross-functional delivery programs; experience in the securities or financial services industry is a plus. Strong foundational understanding of modern AI and agentic application patterns, including retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), semantic search, and agent-based system design. Hands-on experience building backend services, APIs, and production systems. Experience working across architecture, data, and platform concerns rather than only within a narrow laye.

Preferred Qualifications 

• Track record of building or scaling a delivery capability (e.g., solutions engineering, forward deployment, platform engineering) within a large enterprise or regulated environment. 
• Demonstrated experience delivering AI, data, or workflow-heavy solutions at scale in regulated environments, with accountability for production outcomes. Strong systems-thinking and architecture judgment across services, data, and infrastructure; able to evaluate and influence technology choices at a divisional level. 
• Experience defining and operating delivery standards, playbooks, or center-of-excellence functions. 
• Experience balancing speed with governance, security, and operational rigor across a team or portfolio. 
• Deep familiarity with reusable platform patterns, internal developer platforms, and productized infrastructure. 

Technical Skills 

• Strong software engineering skills in one or more of: Java, TypeScript/JavaScript, Python. 
• Experience with APIs, service integration, and secure-by-default engineering practices. 
• Ability to work across data, AI, workflow, and platform layers as needed. Comfort using modern AI tooling pragmatically without confusing prototypes for production systems. 
• Familiarity with application frameworks and containerization. 

Non-Technical Skills 

• Exceptional written and verbal communication; able to advise and influence senior business and technology executives. 
• Strong strategic and product judgment: knows which opportunities are worth pursuing and which are not. 
• Proven ability to lead across matrixed organizations and build alignment without formal authority. 
• Structured tradeoff thinking at portfolio scale, balancing risk, speed, and long-term platform health. 
• Bias toward action with disciplined follow-through and strong artifact discipline. 

People Leadership 

• Leads, grows, and retains a team of senior engineers; sets technical standards and delivery culture for the FDE function. 
• Develops talent pipelines and mentors engineers toward greater technical and delivery autonomy. 
• Influences technology implementation and forward-deployed delivery standards across large IT divisions.