Head of Forward Deployed Engineering
Application analysis
Head of Forward Deployed Engineering at Replit is a forward deployed enterprise software role for engineers who want customer-facing technical work with real deployment ownership.
Reading this role
This Forward Deployed Engineer role centers on embedded customer delivery — discovery, prototyping, integration, and production rollout. Key signals from the listing: Customer on-site travel, Senior scope.
About Replit
Enterprise software forward deployed engineers drive adoption, integration, and measurable customer outcomes. The role is anchored in Foster City, CA, so expect on-site customer work in that region.
Signals in the listing
Stand out for Head of Forward Deployed Engineering
- Lead your application with one paragraph tying Head of Forward Deployed Engineering to a specific customer or deployment you owned — Replit hires for shipped outcomes, not tool lists.
- Prepare a 5-minute “week one on site” plan: who you would meet, what you would inspect in their stack, and what artifact you would deliver by day five.
- Show you can go from discovery notes → working integration → production checklist without needing a large internal team.
- This role is tied to Foster City, CA — mention willingness to work on-site with customers and any existing ties to that market (clients, partners, or domain knowledge).
Stand out at Replit
- Demonstrate stakeholder management with a concrete example — Replit will probe for specifics, not buzzwords.
- Demonstrate integration skill with a concrete example — Replit will probe for specifics, not buzzwords.
- Prepare stories that move from discovery → pilot → production with named outcomes.
- Read recent engineering blog posts, product launches, and customer stories on replit.com — reference one explicitly in your outreach to show genuine interest.
Tailored from this listing’s title, company, and description. Always verify requirements on the company careers page before applying.
Role description
Replit is the agentic software creation platform that enables anyone to build applications using natural language. With millions of users worldwide, Replit is democratizing software development by removing traditional barriers to application creation.
About The Role
We’re looking for a Head of Forward Deployed Engineering to build and lead the team responsible for helping our most strategic enterprise customers operationalize Replit inside their organizations. Reporting to the President and Head of AI, you’ll lead a team operating at the intersection of engineering, product, and customer transformation. Your team will embed deeply with customers, solve hard technical problems, build production systems, and help define how enterprises adopt AI-native software development. This is not a traditional solutions engineering or post-sales role. Forward Deployed Engineers at Replit are software engineers who work directly with customers to build production systems, deploy AI-native workflows, and turn customer problems into reusable platform capabilities. This team should be among the most advanced users of Replit and AI-native development workflows inside the company. We expect Forward Deployed Engineers to aggressively use AI agents, automation, and Replit itself to increase leverage and accelerate customer outcomes. This role requires strong technical depth, product instincts, customer judgment, and the ability to operate at high velocity in ambiguous environments.
In This Role You Will
Build And Lead The Fde Organization
- Hire and develop a high-talent-density team of Forward Deployed Engineers
- Define the hiring bar, operating principles, and execution standards for the organization
- Build a team culture centered around speed, ownership, pragmatism, and customer impact
- Create systems and tooling that allow the team to scale without becoming process-heavy
Work Directly With Strategic Customers
- Partner with engineering leaders, product teams, and executives at some of Replit’s largest enterprise customers
- Help customers redesign workflows around AI-native software development
- Lead complex technical engagements involving integrations, infrastructure, agents, automation, and internal developer platforms
- Unblock high-stakes deployments and help customers move from experimentation to production adoption
Build Production Systems
- Lead teams building real applications and workflows directly inside customer environments
- Drive rapid prototyping and iteration cycles with customers
- Jump into architecture reviews, debugging sessions, implementation strategy, or live builds when needed
Influence Product And Platform Direction
- Identify repeatable customer implementation patterns and turn them into reusable platform capabilities
- Partner closely with Product and Engineering to upstream learnings from customer deployments into the core platform
- Contribute production-ready code, tooling, integrations, and reference architectures that improve enterprise adoption at scale
- Create tight feedback loops between customer environments and Replit’s internal product development teams
Drive Business Impact
- Partner closely with Sales, Field Engineering, and Product on strategic accounts
- Improve customer adoption, expansion, retention, and deployment velocity
- Act as an executive escalation point for critical customer situations
- Help define how Replit scales enterprise adoption globally
Success In This Role Looks Like
- Strategic customers successfully deploying Replit into production environments
- Faster customer time-to-value and expansion across enterprise accounts
- Repeatable deployment patterns becoming reusable platform capabilities
- Increased enterprise adoption of AI-native development workflows
- A high-talent-density FDE organization operating with speed, ownership, and strong customer impact
Required Skills And Experience
- 12+ years of experience in engineering, infrastructure, developer tools, applied AI, or customer engineering environments
- Experience leading Forward Deployed Engineering, Applied AI, Solutions Architecture, or Strategic Engineering teams
- Deep curiosity around AI-native software development and strong instincts for how AI changes engineering workflows
- Experience leading high-performing technical organizations
- Strong technical judgment and the ability to operate credibly with senior engineers and executives
- Experience building and shipping production systems in fast-moving environments
- Strong product instincts and systems thinking
- Comfortable operating with ambiguity and minimal process
- Excellent communication and customer leadership skills
- Strong sense of ownership and urgency
Nice To Have
- Experience with AI agents, LLM workflows, or developer tooling platforms
- Experience supporting Fortune 500 engineering organizations
- Startup or founder experience
- Experience working closely with Product organizations to shape roadmap direction
This Role May Not Be A Fit If
- You prefer highly structured environments with clearly defined boundaries
- You want to stay purely managerial and far from technical details
- You optimize for process over speed
- You are uncomfortable operating directly with customers
- You prefer maintaining systems over building new ones from scratch
Full-Time Employee
Benefits
Include:
💰 Competitive Salary & Equity 💹 401(k) Program with a 4% match (US Only) ⚕️ Health, Dental, Vision and Life Insurance 🩼 Short Term and Long Term Disability
🚼 Paid Parental, Medical, Caregiver Leave
🏝 Flexible Time Off (FTO) + Holidays
🚗 Commuter
Benefits
(In-Office Only)
📱 Monthly Wellness Stipend
🧑💻 Autonomous Work Environment
🖥 In Office Set-Up Reimbursement (In-Office Only)
🚀 Quarterly Team Gatherings
☕ In Office Amenities (In-Office Only)
Want to learn more about what we are up to?
- Meet the Replit Agent https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYiVPrxY8-Y
- Replit: Make an app for that https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zd9hzngFwY
- Replit Blog https://blog.replit.com/
- Amjad TED Talk https://youtu.be/kCudFI4tcpg?si=l4ViCejV_f2RZkDi
Interviewing + Culture at Replit
- Operating Principles https://blog.replit.com/operating-principles
- Reasons not to work at Replit https://blog.replit.com/reasons-not-to-join-replit
To achieve our mission of making programming more accessible around the world, we need our team to be representative of the world. We welcome your unique perspective and experiences in shaping this product. We encourage people from all kinds of backgrounds to apply, including and especially candidates from underrepresented and non-traditional backgrounds.