Forward Deployed Engineering Leader
First Resonance · Los Angeles
About this role
## Forward Deployed Engineering Leader ### Why this role matters First Resonance builds the ION Factory OS—an operating system powering next-generation manufacturing for companies building rockets, satellites, eVTOLs, clean energy systems, robotics, and autonomous vehicles. Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) is where product, customers, and commercial outcomes meet. You’ll lead a team that turns ambiguous operational problems into deployed software, successful go-lives, and lasting customer value. > **Note:** This is **not** a delivery-coordination role. You’ll be a technical and people leader accountable for team quality, deployment portfolio health, and business outcomes. ### What you’ll own - **Build and lead an exceptional FDE team**: Hire, onboard, coach, and retain engineers; set expectations; provide direct feedback; create growth paths for technical and leadership development. - **Own the deployment portfolio**: Set priorities, staffing, capacity, milestones, and risk management across concurrent customer engagements—ensuring high-quality delivery and measurable outcomes. - **Raise the technical and delivery bar**: Define standards across discovery, architecture, implementation, testing, go-live, documentation, production support, and deployment reviews. - **Lead critical customer moments**: Act as an executive/technical escalation point for strategic deployments, complex integrations, production incidents, and high-stakes tradeoffs. - **Connect delivery to growth**: Partner with Sales and Customer Success on technical discovery, scoping, expansion strategy, and account planning. - **Turn field learning into leverage**: Build feedback loops with Product and Engineering; productize repeatable solutions; improve FDE tooling/automation; evolve the team’s operating model as the company scales. ### What we’re looking for - **8+ years** relevant software engineering experience (forward deployed engineering, solutions engineering, technical consulting, or enterprise implementation), including **3+ years managing engineers**. - Proven ability to build and develop high-performing technical teams while improving **delivery predictability** and **engineering quality**. - Strong technical judgment across modern software systems, APIs, integrations, data pipelines, cloud infrastructure, security, and production operations. - Experience owning complex, customer-facing technical programs from discovery through go-live and ongoing operation. - Executive-level communication and commercial judgment: align customers and internal leaders, manage scope/risk, and connect technical decisions to adoption, expansion, and revenue. ### Nice to have - Experience leading forward deployed, solutions architecture, professional services, implementation engineering, or technical account teams. - Domain experience in manufacturing, aerospace/defense, energy, industrial software, ERP, PLM, MES, or other operationally complex environments. - Evidence of scaling a technical services/deployment function while improving repeatability, margins, or revenue contribution. - Experience partnering with Product and Engineering to turn customer-specific work into reusable platform capabilities. - Familiarity with enterprise security, regulated environments, air-gapped networks, and high-availability production systems. ### Benefits & perks - Health Insurance (medical, vision, dental, life) - Paid Parental Leave - Employee Stock Option Plan - Team outings, group lunch
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