Manager, Forward Deployed Engineering

Impact You Will Have

• Oversee regional performance targets including billable utilization, team growth, and hiring while championing delivery excellence and customer success across the FDE portfolio.
• Partner with Account Executives, Engagement Managers, and Field Engineering leaders to position, scope, and deliver transformational Professional Services (PS) programs spanning data migrations, AI/ML platforms, and advanced analytics.
• Establish best practices for project oversight, risk management, and quality standards that scale with a growing FDE practice, ensuring projects are delivered on time and to specification.
• Synthesize field insights from your team’s engagements to provide direct feedback to Engineering and Product management, helping to guide the Databricks roadmap while driving the creation of reusable customer accelerators and frameworks.
• Serve as the critical escalation point for high-stakes customer situations, leveraging deep technical credibility and leadership judgment to protect strategic relationships and drive rapid resolution.
• Mentor Forward Deployed Engineers through structured career pathways, technical coaching, and a culture of innovation, mastery, and continuous growth.

Requirements

• 4+ years of people leadership experience managing high-performing technical delivery teams, solution architects, or professional services organizations with a proven track record of building excellence-driven cultures.
• 5+ years of hands-on individual contributor experience as a technical solutions architect or data/AI engineer, providing the technical depth to coach and credibly support senior practitioners.
• Demonstrated success leading large-scale data platform migrations and AI/ML programs within enterprise environments, across industries such as Public Sector, Manufacturing, Finance, Healthcare, Retail, Telco, or Energy.
• Strong understanding of technical project delivery, including managing scope, timelines, statements of work (SOWs), and professional services delivery metrics.
• Strong stakeholder management skills, with experience navigating complex, high-stakes customer environments and influencing at the C-suite level.
• Familiarity with Databricks, Apache Spark™, MLflow, Delta Lake, or the modern data and AI ecosystem; hands-on experience with Databricks or a direct competitor is highly valued.
• Ability to travel to customer sites and Databricks offices approximately 20% of the time.