Sr. Director, (Applied AI) Forward Deployed Engineering
Application analysis
Sr. Director, (Applied AI) Forward Deployed Engineering at Scale AI is a forward deployed ai company 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: Senior scope.
About Scale AI
This company is building AI products where forward deployed engineers translate capabilities into customer outcomes quickly. The role is anchored in New York, NY, so expect on-site customer work in that region.
Signals in the listing
Stand out for Sr. Director, (Applied AI) Forward Deployed Engineering
- Lead your application with one paragraph tying Sr. Director, (Applied AI) Forward Deployed Engineering to a specific customer or deployment you owned — Scale AI 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 New York, NY — mention willingness to work on-site with customers and any existing ties to that market (clients, partners, or domain knowledge).
Stand out at Scale AI
- Demonstrate rapid prototyping with a concrete example — Scale AI will probe for specifics, not buzzwords.
- Demonstrate customer discovery with a concrete example — Scale AI will probe for specifics, not buzzwords.
- Expect questions about real deployments, safety tradeoffs, and how you partner with customers on week one.
- Read recent engineering blog posts, product launches, and customer stories on scale.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
About Scale
AI Scale’s mission is to develop reliable AI systems for the world’s most important decisions. We work with leading enterprises to bring generative AI safely into production—powering real-world impact through rigorous evaluation, deployment, and execution.
The Role
The Sr. Director, Forward Deployed Engineering (US East) will lead Scale’s enterprise customer engagements across the Eastern United States. This role sits at the intersection of customer leadership, applied AI, and execution—owning how Scale partners with Fortune 500 executives to design, build, and deploy AI-powered systems that deliver measurable business outcomes. As a regional leader and peer to Scale’s existing Forward Deployed leadership, you will manage and grow multidisciplinary teams of applied scientists and full-stack engineers, shape how we deliver agentic AI applications in customer environments, and set the bar for executive-level customer engagement. This is a high-impact leadership role in a period of regional expansion and organizational evolution.
You will:
Lead all US East enterprise customer engagements, serving as the senior technical and delivery executive for Scale’s most strategic accounts. Partner closely with Sales, Product, and Engineering leadership to support customer acquisition, expansion, and long-term success. Build and manage forward-deployed teams composed of applied scientists and full-stack software engineers, structured into customer-specific technical pods. Own end-to-end delivery execution for customer deployments, ensuring reliability, rigor, and measurable business impact. Guide teams in building production-grade, agentic AI applications for Fortune 500 enterprises. Establish and enforce an evals-first approach to customer deplo