Unknown - Forward Deployed Engineering Manager

United States$168k - $247k+ Equity2mo ago

In Office Staff NA Software Nonprofit Engineering Manager CTO Team Management Customer Onboarding Terraform

Requirements

• You’ve led or helped build technical customer-facing teams such as professional services, forward deployed engineering, solution architecture, or implementation • You like operating as both a builder and a leader • You can work directly with customers while also designing the systems, patterns, and operating model behind the work • You’re comfortable with ambiguity and energized by defining a new category of work rather than inheriting a finished playbook • You care about customer outcomes, product feedback loops, and practical organizational change • You have enough technical depth to engage credibly with cloud-native platforms, developer workflows, and AI-enabled development practices • (Tacos? If you need an ice-breaker, ask how we say thanks by giving tacos!) • Experience with Terraform, platform engineering, developer infrastructure, or cloud development environments • Experience in regulated or large enterprise environments • Experience introducing new operating models across post-sales or go-to-market teams • Coder is an AI software development company leading the future of autonomous coding. We empower teams to build software faster, more securely, and at scale through the collaboration of AI coding agents and human developers. Our mission is to make agentic AI a safe, trusted, and integral part of every software development lifecycle. • Our self-hosted AI Development Environment is the foundation for deploying agentic AI in the enterprise. It provides a secure, standardized, and governed workspace to deploy autonomous coding agents alongside human developers, accelerating innovation while maintaining control and compliance. Coder's isolated, policy-driven environments improve productivity, cut cloud costs, and reduce data risks. Developers transition to AI at their own pace using their own tools. Platform and security teams can govern, audit, and manage a great developer experience at scale.

Responsibilities

• The pattern system. Four engagement types: Win, Onboard, Health/Get-Well, and Long-Term Partnership. One governing principle across all four: investment equals TAM. High-TAM accounts get deep, human-led FDE engagement. Lower-TAM accounts get served through the pattern and intelligence layer instead. • The build. Discovery, technical scoping, solution design, hands-on implementation, and early production rollout on lighthouse accounts. You write the workflows, integrations, and glue code yourself when that's what removes the blocker. • The exit. Every engagement is time-boxed with defined exit criteria from day one. You decide the handoff path before the build starts, not after the pilot ends. This is not a permanent delivery function. • The IC search. You are the founding hire for this function. You shape who comes in behind you, set the architectural standards, and own the pattern system going forward. Without this seat filled, FDE drifts back into services. That's the risk this role exists to prevent. • The judgment calls. Deciding when a use case is genuinely ready for production versus when the economics, data readiness, or sponsorship don't support continued investment. Saying no to the wrong engagement is as much the job as saying yes to the right one. • Three non-negotiables: • Cloud implementation depth. Real production infrastructure work, not adjacent exposure to it. • Application development expertise. You've built and shipped, not advised on someone else's build. • An AI-first mindset with production agentic systems shipped. Not a demo. Not a POC. Something running in production, with the failure modes to show for it.

Benefits

• Tier 1$182K – $247K • Offers Equity • Offers Bonus • Tier 2 $174K – $236K • Offers Equity • Offers Bonus • Tier 3$168K – $228K • Offers Equity • Offers Bonus • Coder determines compensation based on the level, role, and location you live in. For more information, please see our Compensation Philosophy. • This role is leveled as M4. Please feel free to ask any questions about compensation and levels during your initial interview. • Coder is hiring a Forward Deployed Engineering leader to build and scale a new function within Customer Solutions. This role starts in post-sales, focused on onboarding, architecture “get well” engagements, and helping customers adopt new development patterns. Over time, this leader will help define how forward deployed engineering should work at Coder and how adjacent roles, such as CSMs and TAMs, evolve in an AI-augmented operating model. • This is a builder role. The person in this seat will work directly with customers, shape the program design, partner closely with leadership, and help establish a repeatable model that improves customer outcomes while keeping the team lean and highly leveraged.