Director, Forward Deployed Engineering
Lead a team of engineers to deploy Viam's robotics platform in customer environments while managing technical approaches and customer relationships.
Posted by employer 2 months ago
First seen on Joblaze 1 month ago
Last verified on the company career page 1 day ago
Not disclosed in this posting: years of experience, visa sponsorship.
Benefits
Joblaze summary
The Director of Forward Deployed Engineering at Viam leads a team focused on deploying the company's robotics platform for strategic clients, ensuring successful production rollouts. This role requires a blend of technical leadership and management skills, with an emphasis on architecture decisions and customer engagement. Ideal candidates will have experience managing engineers in customer-facing roles and a strong grasp of systems integration, though prior robotics experience is not mandatory. Viam, a growing company in the robotics space, values collaboration and accountability within its innovative team.
Joblaze insights
- Listed about a month ago — first seen on Joblaze September 3, 2026. Last confirmed on Viam's careers page October 29, 2026.
- Salary band is above the typical range for Management roles (median ~$170,000).
- Starts above 66% of 275 comparable director management roles in United States we track (median $200,000 across 121 companies).
Quick facts
- Is the Director, Forward Deployed Engineering role remote?
- It's hybrid — Viam expects some on-site time in New York, NY.
- What's the salary range?
- Viam lists $225,000–$275,000 for this role.
- Where is the role based?
- Viam is hiring for this position in New York, NY.
- What seniority level is this role?
- Viam targets director candidates for this position.
- Is this full-time or contract?
- Full-time for this Director, Forward Deployed Engineering role at Viam.
From the original posting
About Viam
About the Role
Hybrid 3 days/week in NYC office, with occasional travel to customer sites
We're looking for a Director of Forward Deployed Engineering to lead the team responsible for getting Viam's customers into production. You'll manage a team of five engineers working across our most strategic accounts, own the technical approach to each deployment, and serve as the senior technical partner to our customers' engineering and operations leaders.
This is a leadership role for someone who is still technical. You'll spend your time on architecture decisions, design reviews, coaching, and customer conversations. Prior professional robotics experience isn't required, but you should be comfortable around hardware and physical systems, and able to get fluent in a new platform quickly.
What you’ll own:
- Manage a team of five forward deployed engineers: coaching, performance, hiring, and how they are resourced across accounts.
- Own the technical approach across deployments and make the architecture and prioritization calls.
- Be the senior technical voice with customer leadership, from kickoff through escalation.
- Work with Viam leadership on account direction, and keep them current on progress, risks, and blockers.
- Drive deployments to production: hold the schedule, unblock what's stuck, and change approach when a site demands it.
- Turn field learnings into platform priorities with Product and Engineering.
What you bring:
- Experience managing engineers who deploy software in customer environments.
- Deep systems experience and the ability to get fluent in an unfamiliar platform quickly. You can review a design and read code, though you won't be coding day to day.
- Judgment across systems integration, SDKs, and edge/cloud architectures, including what breaks when networks and hardware are unreliable.
- A track record with enterprise customers, including the credibility to hold a hard conversation with their leadership.
- Comfort deciding with incomplete information and owning the outcome.
- Experience building structure where none existed, in an environment where most of the work is still bespoke.
- Willingness to balance one customer's urgency against what scales across the portfolio.
Experience with robotics or IoT is not required.
The salary for this role is between $225,000 - $300,000 /year.
Full-time Benefits
Viam’s base salary range for this role is posted above. In addition to cash compensation, Viam offers a comprehensive Total Rewards package that includes equity grants, health benefits, and more.
Standard company text repeated across Viam's postings is omitted here.