Director, Forward Deployed Engineering
Genesys · Texas, United States
Be the one building AI-powered experiences where they matter most.
At Genesys, we help organizations create better customer experiences through AI-powered experience orchestration. Our platform connects people, systems, data and AI to help organizations deliver more personalized service, improve operational efficiency and build stronger customer relationships.
Help build, support and operate technology used by more than 8,000 organizations in over 100 countries – moving AI from possibility to production in real-world enterprise environments every day.
About the RoleGenesys is building a new Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) team to take the most valuable AI use cases from customer idea to production. We are seeking a hands-on, commercially minded leader to build, coach and scale this team of approximately five Forward Deployed Engineers, with plans to grow as demand increases.
FDEs embed with customer business and technical leaders, build working agentic AI on customer systems, data and APIs, and carry it through production and optimization. As the FDE Leader, you are a player coach, accountable for the team's customer outcomes, delivery quality, hiring bar, and the reusable assets that let every engagement make the next one faster.
This is not a traditional people-management role. We want a technical builder and executive-credible leader who can still review configuration, integrations, code, debug a production agent and whiteboard an architecture, while also shaping engagement strategy, staffing and the feedback loop to Product and Engineering.
What You'll Do
Build, Lead and Develop the FDE Team- Set clear goals, career paths, feedback cycles and a culture of high ownership, urgency, accountability and customer obsession.
- Establish the team's engineering standards for code, prompts, agent design, testing, evaluation and production readiness, and review work alongside your team.
- Build capacity and staffing models that assign scarce FDE talent against the highest-value engagements, and balance bespoke work with scalable offerings.
- Hire, onboard, coach and retain a high-caliber team of Forward Deployed Engineers, selecting for aptitude, ownership and builder mindset over title.
Own Customer Outcomes End to End- Own delivery excellence from use case to prototype, live test, production and optimization for strategic customer engagements.
- Partner with AI Sales Specialists, Account Teams, Pre-Sales, other FDE leaders, and Customer Success to prioritize high-value AI use cases, define business outcomes and set measurable success criteria, all while resourcing for opportunities based on the best fit for a given opportunity.
- Serve as escalation point on key engagements; build trusted relationships with customer CIO, CTO, digital and CX leaders.
- Drive prototype-to-production conversion through clear KPIs, production-readiness frameworks, evaluation pipelines, guardrails and operational handoff models.
Build for Reuse and Scale- Create repeatable delivery methodologies, playbooks and engagement models that multiply impact without multiplying headcount.
- Package proven skills, agents, prompts, integrations, evaluations and deployment patterns into reusable assets and reference architectures that accelerate the next customer.
- Champion AI-native development: drive adoption of coding agents and AI-assisted workflows (for example Cursor, Claude Code, and Kiro) to raise team velocity.
- Contribute to lighthouse AI wins and referenceable customer stories that demonstrate Genesys differentiation.
Shape Product and Go-to-Market- Turn field learnings into clear product requirements and work directly with Product and Engineering to remove production blockers and influence the roadmap.
- Collaborate with AI Sales Specialist and Pre-Sales leadership on engagement triggers, target accounts, scoping and positioning of FDE-led offerings, and flag expansion opportunities early.
- Work alongside peer leaders across FDE, Pre-Sales, AI Architecture and Services to align strategy, avoid overlap and support shared revenue and adoption targets.
Operate with Rigor- Establish metrics and executive reporting: time-to-value, production deployment milestones, adoption, customer satisfaction, AI-influenced ACV, reuse of assets and team utilization.
- Contribute to scoping, commercial and IP considerations for co-developed solutions, balancing customer value with strategic investment.
- Stay hands-on: review architectures and step into critical customer moments when needed.
What We're Looking ForLeadership and Organizational Experience- 5+ years leading customer-facing technical teams such as forward deployed engineering, solutions architecture, pre-sales engineering, technical consulting or professional services; experience standing up a new team or service line is strongly preferred.
- Proven ability to attract, develop and retain senior technical talent, with a track record of building a high hiring bar and a strong team culture.
- Experience operating in highly matrixed, customer-facing enterprise organizations and aligning Sales, Product, Engineering and Services around common goals.
- Demonstrated innovation leadership and the ability to create repeatable processes without adding bureaucracy.
AI and Technical Expertise- Strong hands-on background in software engineering, with working proficiency in Python, TypeScript/JavaScript, Java or equivalent, plus REST APIs, Git and modern cloud architectures (such as AWS).
- Practical depth in LLMs and agentic AI: prompting, tool calling, orchestration, retrieval-augmented generation, grounding, evaluation, guardrails and observability.
- Experience taking AI or software solutions from prototype to production, including integration with enterprise systems, data and APIs (for example Salesforce, ServiceNow or similar platforms).
- Familiarity with AI-native development environments and coding agents, with a willingness to use AI aggressively to accelerate delivery.
- Genesys, CX, contact center or conversational/voice AI expertise is valuable but not required.
Executive Presence and Communication- Equally comfortable in C-suite strategy discussions and technical deep dives; able to translate complex AI architectures into business outcomes and measurable ROI.
- Strong storytelling, workshop facilitation and stakeholder management skills, with a history of embedding with customer teams in complex engagements.
Business and Strategic Mindset- Understanding of enterprise sales cycles, value-based positioning and how technical delivery drives adoption, renewal and expansion.
- Ability to balance customer success investment with commercial discipline and to prioritize ruthlessly in ambiguity.
- Bias for action, high ownership and a strong sense of urgency.
The Profile We Are BuildingA business thinker, hands-on builder, customer technologist and relentless owner who builds once and scales everywhere. This leader is NOT a pure people manager, a pure architect or a presenter without a keyboard. They coach builders because they are one.
Success in This Role- A fully staffed, high-performing FDE team with strong retention and clear career growth.
- Measurable customer outcomes and faster time-to-value on FDE engagements.
- Improved prototype-to-production conversion.
- A growing library of reusable agents, integrations, evaluations and reference architectures.
- Lighthouse customer wins and referenceable stories.
- Tight, effective feedback loops with Product, Engineering, Pre-Sales, Services and Customer Success.
Role Details- Team size: Approximately 5 Forward Deployed Engineers at launch.
- Travel: Regular travel to customer sites and team events, as required by engagements.
Why GenesysGenesys empowers organizations to create exceptional customer and employee experiences through AI-powered experience orchestration. Joining Genesys means helping shape how enterprises adopt agentic AI at global scale and building a tea