Head of Forward Deployment Engineering - Tavily
About the role
About Tavily:
We're building the search engine for AI agents. Our API is designed from the ground up to power RAG and real-time reasoning in AI systems. By connecting LLMs to high quality, trustworthy web content, we help developers build agents that are not only intelligent, but also informed.
We work with some of the most innovative teams in AI, from small startups shaping the ecosystem to the largest enterprises deploying AI at scale. Whether it's powering sales assistants, research copilots, or internal knowledge tools, we're the missing link between LLMs and the real world.
The role
As Head of Forward Deployed Engineering, you'll inherit and lead a growing team of Forward Deployed Engineers while building the operating model for the next stage of scale. You'll establish how the organization hires, executes, prioritizes, and measures success, while remaining hands-on with our most strategic customer engagements. You'll partner closely with the executive team on enterprise strategy, product direction, and high-impact technical initiatives across the business.
Forward Deployed Engineering owns how Tavily shows up technically in the field. The function sits at the intersection of enterprise customers, Product, Engineering, Sales, Customer Success, and strategic initiatives across the business. Its charter is to lead the technical execution of Tavily's most strategic customer initiatives—from discovery and POCs through production rollout and expansion—serving as the company's senior technical force for the highest-impact opportunities in the field.
You're welcome to work remotely from within the United States, with regular presence in New York City as needed.
Your responsibilities will include:
- 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, pr