Manager, Forward Deployed Machine Learning Engineering

What You'll Be Doing

• Lead and manage a team of Forward-Deployed Machine Learning Engineers (FDMLEs) delivering customer-facing AI and ML solutions from prototyping through production deployment and iteration.
• Support team growth through coaching, mentorship, and career development while fostering a strong culture of ownership, customer focus, and operational excellence.
• Drive execution in ambiguous, fast-paced environments by enabling rapid experimentation, iterative development, and close cross-functional collaboration.
• Partner with Federato leadership across Forward Deployed Engineering, Data Science, and Customer Success to align priorities, delivery expectations, and customer outcomes.
• Translate strategic AI initiatives into actionable roadmaps, priorities, and delivery milestones, ensuring projects are effectively scoped, staffed, and executed.
• Establish and improve agile workflows tailored to forward-deployed AI and ML work, including sprint planning, technical design reviews, backlog grooming, retrospectives, and operational follow-through.
• Serve as the primary coordination point across internal teams and customer stakeholders to ensure alignment, transparency, issue resolution, and successful adoption of deployed solutions.
• Drive operational excellence through strong communication, documentation, monitoring, and incident-management practices across customer-facing ML systems.

Who We Hope You Are

• 5+ years of experience in machine learning, applied AI, data science, or related technical fields.
• 2+ years of experience leading or managing technical contributors and cross-functional delivery efforts.
• Experience deploying and operating ML or AI systems in production, including customer-facing or operational environments.
• Strong understanding of ML systems, LLM applications, agentic workflows, evaluation frameworks, and production monitoring best practices.
• Experience working in fast-paced environments with evolving requirements and multiple concurrent workstreams.
• Excellent communication, organizational, and stakeholder management skills.
• Ability to balance technical depth with strong execution and delivery discipline.

Bonus Points If

• Experience leading customer-facing or forward-deployed AI/ML teams.
• Background working closely with Data Science, Engineering, and Customer Success organizations.
• Experience deploying LLM-powered systems, agentic workflows, or automation platforms in production environments.
• Experience scaling AI/ML delivery teams and improving operational processes across customer engagements.

$220,000 - 250,000 a year
Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors including candidate location, experience and expertise and may vary from t