engineering
Posted Jun 25Director, Forward Deployed Engineering
at BetterUp
United States (hybrid), United StatesHybrid
Responsibilities
- Lead FDE engagements end to end—from scoping with customer stakeholders through prototype, production rollout, and handoff to core platform teams. - Be the bridge between field and platform.
- Hire, develop, and retain forward-deployed engineers who thrive in customer-facing, high-ambiguity environments.
- Ship prototypes and integrations on aggressive timelines while maintaining security, data-governance, and enterprise-readiness standards. - Partner across the org.
- - Track record delivering complex software in customer-facing or forward-deployed settings—FDE, solutions engineering, or professional services with real engineering depth.
- - Build organizational muscle for continuous AI learning by embedding experimentation into operating rhythms across FDE engagements.
Requirements
- experience (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, etc.) a strong plus. - Demonstrated ability to operate amid ambiguity—taking vague, executive-level asks and producing working software on tight timelines. - Excellent stakeholder skills: credible with both customer engineers and senior business leaders. - Sound judgment on enterprise concerns: security, data governance, compliance, and scalability. Nice to Have -
- Experience with composability / configurable-product architectures and group-level governance models. - Background working with very large enterprise customers (Fortune 100 / regulated industries). -
- Experience standing up or scaling an FDE / forward-deployed practice from early stage. - Exposure to AI-native engineering workflows and agentic tooling.
- AI at BetterUp Our team thrives at the intersection of human expertise and AI capability.
- As an AI-forward company, adaptation and continuous learning are part of our daily work.
- We're looking for teammates who are excited to evolve alongside technology – people who experiment boldly, share their discoveries openly, and help define best practices for AI-augmented work.
- As a Director, Forward Deployed Engineering you’ll: - Shape functional AI strategy that aligns with business objectives and creates measurable competitive advantage for your teams and customers.
- - Partner with IT, Legal, and Security to establish governance frameworks that enable responsible AI scaling in enterprise contexts.
- - Influence peer directors to adopt AI practices that improve cross-functional collaboration and customer outcomes.
- During our interview process, you’ll have opportunities to showcase how you harness AI to learn, iterate, and amplify your impact.
- We encourage all candidates to share examples of how they’ve used AI tools in their work—whether it’s AI-assisted SQL generation, LLM-powered data documentation, automated anomaly detection, or other applications.
- We view AI fluency as a complement to craft, not a replacement for it.
Experience
- Join us and we promise you the most intense and fulfilling years of your career, doing life-changing work in a fun, inventive, soulful culture.
- If you have some or all of the following, please apply: - 12+ years in software engineering, with 4+ years leading engineering teams (manager-of-managers, or a strong senior-IC-to-lead trajectory).
Benefits
- And when you get an offer from us (and accept it), you get way more than a paycheck.
- Earn credibility directly with customer engineering and executive stakeholders; represent BetterUp’s technical vision in working sessions and escalations.
Additional details
- Let’s face it, a company whose mission is human transformation better have some fresh thinking about the employer/employee relationship. We do.
- We can’t cram it all in here, but you’ll start noticing it from the first interview.
- You get a personal BetterUp Coach, a development plan, a trained and coached manager, the most amazing team you’ve ever met (yes, each with their own personal BetterUp Coach), and most importantly, work that matters.
- This makes for a remarkably focused and fulfilling work experience.
- But for people with fire in their belly, it’s a game-changing, career-defining, soul-lifting move.
- If that sounds exciting—and the job description below feels like a fit—we really should start talking.
- We are a hybrid company with a focus on in-person collaboration when necessary.
- Employees are expected to be available to work from one of our office hubs at least two days per week, or eight days per month.
- Our US hub locations include: Austin, TX; New York City, NY; San Francisco, CA; and the Washington, DC metro area.
- Please ensure you can realistically commit to this structure before applying.