Pre-Sales Program Lead, Forward Deployed Engineering

Responsibilities

• Design, pilot, and refine pre-sales programs for Forward Deployed Engineering’s pipeline, including opportunity generation, qualification, routing, pursuit, and win processes.
• Own portfolio prioritization heuristics across commercial, research, and mission-oriented engagements.
• Lead complex, high-stakes pre-sales pursuits while building scalable programs for the broader team.
• Define pursuit-to-signature processes covering scoping, proposals, approvals, legal, finance, and procurement workflows.
• Build partner coordination processes for handoffs, teaming, subcontracting, and co-delivery pursuits.
• Define sales-to-delivery handoffs with the Post-Sale Programs Lead.
• Establish metrics, dashboards, and reporting for pipeline health, conversion, cycle time, and portfolio mix.
• Codify processes into playbooks and self-service programs.
• Use Claude in proposals, deal qualification, and pipeline tracking.
• Partner with Sales, Partnerships, Legal, Finance, and Product.

Requirements

• Experience building or scaling pre-sales operations for a services or delivery business, such as professional services, consulting, solutions, or field engineering.
• Technical fluency sufficient to scope and defend AI and software services work with engineering leaders and technical buyers.
• Experience taking complex deals through contracting with legal, finance, and procurement stakeholders.
• Experience designing programs, playbooks, or operating cadences that teams adopted.
• Strong analytical skills, including building metrics and reporting from scratch.
• Clear communication and ability to influence across functions without formal authority.
• Comfort operating in high-ambiguity environments and building new processes.
• Excitement about developing safe and beneficial AI.
• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent combination of education, training, and experience.

Nice-to-haves

• Experience with partner-involved deal motions, including subcontracting, co-delivery, teaming, or channel handoffs.
• Experience as a first programs or operations hire or building a function from scratch.
• Experience hiring, developing, and leading programs or operations teams.
• Experience in AI or technical professional services.
• Experience implementing pre-sales tooling and systems, including CRM, proposal, and approval workflows.
• Extensive experience in deal operations, revenue programs, or services go-to-market at a high-growth technology company.

Compensation and benefits

• Annual on-target earnings compensation range: $270,000–$365,000 USD.
• The range includes annual base salary and target sales commissions or bonuses for sales roles.
• Hybrid policy: staff are expected to work from an office at least 25% of the time, with some roles requiring more office time.
• Visa sponsorship may be available for eligible roles and candidates.