Senior Engineering Manager, Forward Deployed Engineering
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Overview
Job Description
About Handshake
Handshake is the career network for the AI economy. 20 million knowledge workers, 1,600 educational institutions, 1 million employers (including 100% of the Fortune 50), and every foundational AI lab trust Handshake to power career discovery, hiring, and upskilling, from freelance AI training gigs to first internships to full-time careers and beyond. This unique value is leading to unparalleled growth; in 2025, we tripled our ARR at scale.
Why join Handshake now:
Shape how every career evolves in the AI economy, at global scale, with impact your friends, family and peers can see and feel
Work hand-in-hand with world-class AI labs, Fortune 500 partners and the world’s top educational institutions
Join a team with leadership from Scale AI, Meta, xAI, Notion, Coinbase, and Palantir, among others
Build a massive, fast-growing business with billions in revenue
About the role
Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) is the engineering team that unblocks high-priority, customer-facing work for Handshake AI’s most strategic partners. FDEs are technical builders: they ship end-to-end solutions in close collaboration with researchers, operators, and partner technical teams.
As the Senior Engineering Manager, Forward Deployed Engineering, you will lead and scale a team of FDEs deployed to our most important accounts and projects. You’ll build the foundations of the org (operating rhythms, prioritization, quality bar, and career ladders) while staying close enough to the work to guide technical decision-making and execution.
This role is ideal for a leader who can translate technical tradeoffs into business decisions, build trusted relationships across stakeholders, and create structure in an ambiguous, fast-moving environment.
What you’ll do
Manage and grow a team of Forward Deployed Engineers working across multiple high-priority customer engagements.
Serve as the senior technical and delivery partner to researchers and internal partners at the labs and teams we work with.
Build the operating system for intake, triage, prioritization, capacity planning, and execution across competing requests.
Drive alignment across Engineering, Product, Research, and Operations on what gets built and why; provide thoughtful, well-reasoned pushback when needed.
Ensure customer-facing solutions are built with strong engineering fundamentals: reliability, observability, security, documentation, and maintainability.
Develop senior ICs and people managers; set expectations, run performance management, and build a high-performing, inclusive culture.
Establish scalable processes so forward-deployed work consistently turns into durable product/platform improvements.
Must haves
8+ years of software engineering experience.
3+ years in a customer-facing or field engineering role (e.g., forward deployed, solutions engineering, field engineering, customer-embedded product development).
Experience managing teams of 10+ engineers, including managing managers and senior ICs.
Proven track record managing and growing high-performing FDE and/or solutions engineering teams.
Ability to translate technical tradeoffs into business decisions; comfortable presenting options and recommendations to both technical and executive audiences.
Strong stakeholder management skills; can build trust, communicate clearly, and drive alignment across ambiguous problem spaces.
Strong prioritization and capacity planning skills.
Demonstrated ability to build process and structure in fast-moving environments.
Nice to haves
Deep understanding of distributed systems and backend architecture.
Experience partnering with operations-heavy organizations.
Experience building repeatable platforms from bespoke customer solutions.
Experience with AI/ML product integrations and production reliability challenges.
Why join now
Build the foundations of an FDE org at a high-growth startup and help define how we scale customer delivery.
Lead a highly leveraged team that directly impacts customer outcomes and revenue.
Work closely with world-class AI labs and ship products at the frontier of applied AI.
Perks
Handshake delivers benefits that help you feel supported—and thrive at work and in life.
The below benefits are for full-time US employees.
🎯 Ownership: Equity in a fast-growing company
💰 Financial Wellness: 401(k) match, competitive compensation, financial coaching
🍼 Family Support: Paid parental leave, fertility benefits, parental coaching
💝 Wellbeing: Medical, dental, and vision, mental health support, $500 wellness stipend
📚 Growth: $2,000 learning stipend, ongoing development
💻 Remote & Office: Internet, commuting, and free lunch/gym in our SF office
🏝 Time Off: Flexible PTO, 15 holidays + 2 flex days
🤝 Connection: Team outings & referral bonuses
Explore our mission, values, and comprehensive US benefits at joinhandshake.com/careers.
Automate your job search with Sonara.
Submit 10x as many applications with less effort than one manual application.
