Senior Manager, Deployed Engineering

Fieldguide
San Francisco, CA
Remote

Who this role is best for

Strong fit for engineers with hands-on deployment experience who want to lead and build AI solutions in regulated environments, working remotely or in San Francisco.

Best fit for

  • Candidates with experience in enterprise customer deployments and AI agent development
    — “Experience deploying LLM or agent-based systems in production”
  • Individuals who have led technical teams in early-stage growth environments
    — “Experience leading or mentoring engineers, and excitement about building a team from an early stage”
  • Professionals with a background in audit, accounting, or compliance domains
    — “Knowledge of audit, accounting, risk or compliance”

Things to consider

  • The role requires direct client interaction in complex and regulated settings
    — “Comfort in front of senior enterprise stakeholders, especially in regulated or complex environments”
  • Candidates must be willing to write production code even as they transition into leadership
    — “You still build. You've written production software recently and want to keep doing it.”

How to stand out

  • Highlight your hands-on technical contributions in customer-facing engineering roles
    — “Write production code. Build agents, integrations and tools alongside the team”
  • Emphasize your ability to translate field work into scalable platform features
    — “Turn field work into product. Spot patterns across deployments and work with Product and Engineering”
  • Showcase your experience in leading technical teams during product scaling
    — “Build the FDE team. Hire, coach and grow strong engineers who can both build and work directly with customers”
Pace · Fast PacedCollaboration · HighAutonomy · MediumDecision Impact · Team

Derived from job-description analysis by Serendipath's career intelligence engine.

What success looks like

  • builds and scales customer deployments
  • leads technical delivery for enterprise customers
  • builds and leads the FDE team
Typical background
forward deployed engineering or customer engineering experience

Skills & requirements

Required

Forward Deployed EngineeringCustomer DeploymentsProduction CodeTechnical DeliveryCustomer EngineeringKit PartsInventory ManagementESD Handling

Preferred

RoboticsElectronics Assembly

About the role

Original posting from Fieldguide via Ashby

About Us

Fieldguide is establishing a new state of trust for global commerce and capital markets through automating and streamlining the work of advisory, audit, and tax practitioners at the world's largest CPA firms. Put simply, we build software for the people who enable trust between businesses.

We’re headquartered in San Francisco, CA and backed by top investors including Growth Equity at Goldman Sachs Alternatives, Bessemer Venture Partners, 8VC, Floodgate, Y Combinator, DNX Ventures, Global Founders Capital, Justin Kan, Elad Gil, and more.

We value diversity — in backgrounds and in experiences. We need people from all backgrounds and walks of life to help build the future of audit and advisory. Fieldguide’s team is inclusive, driven, humble and supportive. We are deliberate and self-reflective about the kind of team and culture that we are building, seeking teammates that are not only strong in their own aptitudes but care deeply about supporting each other's growth.

As a growth stage startup employee, you’ll have the opportunity to build out the future of business trust. We make audit practitioners’ lives easier by eliminating up to 50% of their work and giving them better work-life balance. If you share our values and enthusiasm for building a great culture and product, you will find a home at Fieldguide.

About the Role

Our forward deployed engineers (FDEs) work alongside practitioners at the world's largest audit firms. They build prototype agents on those firms' real workflows and ship production code. One current problem is producing verifiable citations from dense Excel workbooks, because an auditor has to trace every conclusion back to the exact evidence.

Our Senior Manager, Deployed Engineering role will start as a player-coach role where you will need to be hands on as we build and scale this effort. At the start, you'll be working directly in customer deployments, writing production code and solving the hardest technical problems yourself. You'll also build and lead the team around you.

As the team grows, your focus will move toward leadership, but you'll always be close to the work. You'll report to our CTO/co-founder and work closely and with Product, Engineering and Customer leadership.

What You'll Do

As a player:

  • Lead important deployments yourself. Own technical delivery for some of our largest enterprise customers, from scoping through production. This includes single-tenant and government-cloud environments, regulated data, and audit methods that differ from firm to firm.
  • Write production code. Build agents, integrations and tools alongside the team, and handle the hardest technical problems directly.
  • Be the senior technical voice with customers. Act as a trusted advisor to partners, CIOs and audit leaders on how AI agents fit their practice.

As a coach:

  • Build the FDE team. Hire, coach and grow strong engineers who can both build and work directly with customers. Set the bar through your own work first.
  • Make deployment repeatable. Turn what you learn from hands-on work into playbooks, tools and metrics that speed up time-to-value as we grow upmarket.
  • Turn field work into product. Spot patterns across deployments and work with Product and Engineering so solutions built for one customer become reusable platform features.

What We're Looking For

  • 5+ years of leadership experience in forward deployed, deployment, solutions or customer engineering. That might mean FDE leadership at Palantir or a similar company, a Field CTO role, or leading technical work with large enterprise customers.
  • You still build. You've written production software recently and want to keep doing it. This role isn't a fit for someone looking for a manage-only role.
  • Experience leading or mentoring engineers, and excitement about building a team from an early stage.
  • Comfort in front of senior enterprise stakeholders, especially in regulated or complex environments.
  • Good judgment about building for one customer versus the platform, and the ability to push back on scope when it matters.
  • Excitement about bringing AI agents into high-stakes professional work.

Bonus Points

  • Experience at a Big 4 firm (Deloitte, PwC, EY, KPMG) or a major consulting firm such as Accenture, McKinsey, BCG or Bain.
  • Knowledge of audit, accounting, risk or compliance.
  • Experience deploying LLM or agent-based systems in production.

More about Fieldguide

Fieldguide is a values-based company. Our values are:

  • Fearless - Inspire & break down seemingly impossible walls.
  • Fast - Launch fast with excellence, iterate to perfection.
  • Lovable - Deliver happiness & 11 star experiences.
  • Owners - Execute & run the business with ownership.
  • Win-win - Create mutual value & earn trust for life.
  • Inclusive - Scale the best ideas with inclusive teams.

Some of our benefits include

  • Competitive compensation packages with meaningful ownership
  • Flexible PTO
  • 401k
  • Wellness benefits starting on your first day
  • Technology & Work from Home reimbursement
  • Flexible work schedules

Source: Fieldguide careers (Ashby)

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