Manager, Autonomy Applications Engineering

Responsibilities

• Lead, manage, mentor, and develop a team of Forward Deployed Engineers responsible for customer deployments and technical customer success.
• Own team planning, prioritization, staffing, and execution for on-site and virtual customer engagements.
• Provide technical leadership for customer onboarding, deployment, adoption, and operational success with the Hivemind SDK.
• Serve as an escalation point and trusted technical leader for customers using Hivemind in real-world environments.
• Translate customer goals, mission needs, and program objectives into technical milestones, execution plans, and team priorities.
• Drive accountability for achieving intended customer outcomes during active engagements.
• Guide debugging and resolution of complex software and integration issues.
• Partner with customer teams and internal stakeholders to remove blockers, improve time-to-value, and sustain adoption.
• Collect, synthesize, and communicate recurring customer pain points, product gaps, and field insights to internal teams.
• Represent the customer voice in internal planning and prioritization discussions.
• Collaborate with product and engineering teams to improve product quality, usability, deployment readiness, and repeatable field execution.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Computer Science, or a related technical field.
• 8+ years of relevant technical experience in software engineering, deployment engineering, solutions engineering, applications engineering, or forward deployed engineering.
• 2+ years of people management or formal technical leadership experience for engineers.
• Experience in a customer-facing technical leadership role such as forward deployed engineering, solutions engineering, applications engineering, or customer engineering.
• Strong software engineering background, including the ability to review and debug complex systems and guide technical tradeoffs.
• Strong proficiency with modern C++ and professional experience with Python.
• Excellent communication, presentation, interpersonal, coaching, and people leadership skills.
• Strong problem-solving and analytical skills, with sound judgment under pressure.
• Ability to operate with autonomy and accountability in ambiguous environments while leading a team through ambiguity.
• Ability to travel up to 30%.

Nice-to-haves

• 3+ years of experience working in a startup environment.
• Experience managing or leading teams in the defense, robotics, aerospace, or autonomous systems industry.
• Experience building or scaling a forward deployed engineering, solutions engineering, applications engineering, or customer engineering function.
• Experience gathering field feedback, influencing product direction based on customer needs, and establishing repeatable customer success playbooks.

Benefits

• Work at the forefront of AI, autonomy, and next-generation defense systems.
• Operate in an entrepreneurial and mission-driven environment.
• Make a direct impact on international growth and strategic defense partnerships.
• Collaborate with teams solving complex operational challenges.