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Head of Forward Deployed Engineering

Lead the forward deployed engineering team to integrate AI-driven workflows for customers in aerospace, defense, and automotive sectors.

Location
San Francisco, United States
Compensation
Not disclosed
Level
lead
Type
full time

Posted by employer 2 days ago

First seen on Joblaze 1 day ago

Last verified on the company career page 1 day ago

Apply at Flow Engineering → Save job Scanned from flowengineering.com

What you'll build

  • Build and lead the forward deployed engineering function
  • Own customer integrations end to end
  • Design and deploy AI workflows
  • Track adoption and drive product growth
  • Partner with account executives for customer expansion

Must have

  • 7+ years in forward deployed engineering, solutions engineering, or technical customer-facing role
  • 2+ years leading a team
  • Strong technical foundation
  • Hands-on experience building with LLMs or deploying AI-driven workflows
  • Track record of driving adoption and expanding accounts

Nice to have

  • Familiarity with requirements, systems engineering, PLM, or ALM tooling
  • Background in or working with defense, aerospace, or regulated hardware environments
  • Experience with security and compliance requirements common in these industries

Role intensity

40% coding

AI in the day-to-day

Collaborate with AI agents to design, validate, and evolve complex systems.

Requirements

Experience
7+ years

Not disclosed in this posting: compensation, work arrangement, visa sponsorship.

Joblaze summary

The Head of Forward Deployed Engineering at Flow Engineering is responsible for integrating the company's AI-native platform into customer engineering environments, ensuring effective adoption and usage across teams. This role requires a strong technical background in software engineering and experience with AI workflows, as well as a proven ability to drive account growth and customer success. Ideal candidates will have over seven years in relevant technical roles, including leadership experience, and be comfortable navigating complex organizational structures. The position involves hands-on work, including coding and building integrations, while also shaping the team's operational model.

Joblaze insights

  • Listed yesterday — first seen on Joblaze September 25, 2026. Last confirmed on Flow Engineering's careers page September 25, 2026.
  • AI/ML appears in 27.6% of 529 comparable lead management roles in United States; Simulation appears in 0.2% of 529 comparable lead management roles in United States.

Quick facts

How much experience is required?
At least 7 years of relevant experience for this Head of Forward Deployed Engineering role.
What's the tech stack?
Joblaze extracted these technologies from the posting: AI/ML, ALM, CAD, PLM, Simulation, issue tracking.
What seniority level is this role?
Flow Engineering targets lead candidates for this position.
Is this full-time or contract?
Full-time for this Head of Forward Deployed Engineering role at Flow Engineering.

From the original posting

About the role

Flow is seeking a Head of Forward Deployed Engineering to lead the team that turns signed customers into deeply embedded, growing accounts. Our customers are systems and engineering leaders at aerospace, defense, automotive, and hardware companies, and the value they get from Flow depends on how well it connects to their existing tools and how quickly their teams adopt AI-driven workflows. You will own that outcome.

This role sits at the intersection of engineering, product, and revenue. Sales engineers own the technical win before a deal closes. You and your team own everything after: integrating Flow into each customer's engineering stack, building AI workflows around their real processes, driving usage across teams, and expanding accounts into new programs, sites, and business units.

What you'll do

  • Build and lead the forward deployed engineering function, including hiring, setting the operating model, and defining how the team works with sales, product, and engineering.

  • Own customer integrations end to end, connecting Flow to the PLM, ALM, CAD, simulation, and issue tracking tools our customers already rely on.

  • Design and deploy AI workflows tailored to each customer's requirements and systems engineering process, and turn the patterns that work into repeatable playbooks.

  • Own product growth and usage within accounts: track adoption, identify where teams are stuck, and drive Flow from a single team to broad use across an organization.

  • Own customer expansion, partnering with account executives to identify new programs, teams, and use cases, and building the technical case for growing each account.

  • Take clean handoffs from sales engineers on pilots and convert them into successful production deployments.

  • Feed what you learn in the field back to product and engineering, and influence the roadmap based on what customers actually need.

  • Stay hands-on: you will write code, build integrations, and sit with customer engineers when it matters.

About you

  • 7+ years in forward deployed engineering, solutions engineering, software engineering, or a technical customer-facing role, with 2+ years leading a team.

  • Strong technical foundation: you can build integrations, reason about APIs and data models, and understand how software fits into a complex engineering stack.

  • Hands-on experience building with LLMs or deploying AI-driven workflows in production for customers.

  • A track record of driving adoption and expanding accounts, not just delivering projects.

  • Comfortable operating across a customer organization, from individual engineers up to VPs and program leads.

  • Able to build a function from an early stage, balancing hands-on execution with setting structure for a growing team.

  • Comfortable in a fast-moving environment where the product, the customer base, and the team are all scaling quickly.

Nice to have

  • Familiarity with requirements, systems engineering, PLM, or ALM tooling (Jama, DOORS, etc.)

  • Background in or working with defense, aerospace, or regulated hardware environments.

  • Experience with security and compliance requirements common in these industries (ITAR, CMMC, on-prem or restricted deployments).

Standard company text repeated across Flow Engineering's postings is omitted here.

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