About Viam
Founded by Eliot Horowitz, co-founder and former CTO of MongoDB, Viam is a novel robotics engineering platform that lets you configure, control, and manage robots intuitively and quickly. We’re inspiring a generation of engineers to solve complicated automation problems with our uniquely powerful suite of software tools.
We’re a ~100-person company headquartered in New York City.
Hybrid 3 days/week in NYC office, with occasional travel to customer sites
We're looking for a Director of Forward Deployed Engineering to lead the team responsible for getting Viam's customers into production. You'll manage a team of five engineers working across our most strategic accounts, own the technical approach to each deployment, and serve as the senior technical partner to our customers' engineering and operations leaders.
This is a leadership role for someone who is still technical. You'll spend your time on architecture decisions, design reviews, coaching, and customer conversations. Prior professional robotics experience isn't required, but you should be comfortable around hardware and physical systems, and able to get fluent in a new platform quickly.
What you’ll own:- Manage a team of five forward deployed engineers: coaching, performance, hiring, and how they are resourced across accounts.
- Own the technical approach across deployments and make the architecture and prioritization calls.
- Be the senior technical voice with customer leadership, from kickoff through escalation.
- Work with Viam leadership on account direction, and keep them current on progress, risks, and blockers.
- Drive deployments to production: hold the schedule, unblock what's stuck, and change approach when a site demands it.
- Turn field learnings into platform priorities with Product and Engineering.
- Experience managing engineers who deploy software in customer environments.
- Deep systems experience and the ability to get fluent in an unfamiliar platform quickly. You can review a design and read code, though you won't be coding day to day.
- Judgment across systems integration, SDKs, and edge/cloud architectures, including what breaks when networks and hardware are unreliable.
- A track record with enterprise customers, including the credibility to hold a hard conversation with their leadership.
- Comfort deciding with incomplete information and owning the outcome.
- Experience building structure where none existed, in an environment where most of the work is still bespoke.
- Willingness to balance one customer's urgency against what scales across the portfolio.
Experience with robotics or IoT is not required.
The salary for this role is between $225,000 - $275,000 /year.
Viam’s base salary range for this role is posted above. In addition to cash compensation, Viam offers a comprehensive Total Rewards package that includes equity grants, health benefits, and more.
- 100% covered medical/dental/vision insurance plans, commuter benefits
- 25 days paid vacation and generous holiday observances
- Free lunch every day that you’re in the office
- One Medical Membership
- Citi Bike memberships
- Monthly wellness stipend to be used for a variety of fitness-related items like gym memberships, fitness classes, fitness equipment, and more
- Paid parental leave
- Reproductive Health Benefits, including Fertility Benefits and Abortion Access Travel Benefits
- Yearly Learning and Development Budget for your own personal learning goals
- Vision Driven
- Collaborate Openly
- Act Decisively
- Succeed Through Diversity
- Hold Ourselves Accountable
- Lead with Curiosity
Viam does not accept unsolicited agency resumes or calls from recruitment agencies or search firms. Please do not forward resumes to our jobs alias or Viam employees. Viam is not responsible for any fees related to unsolicited resumes.
Skills Required
- Experience managing engineers who deploy software in customer environments
- Deep systems experience and ability to become fluent in unfamiliar platforms quickly
- Ability to review software designs and read code
- Experience with systems integration, SDKs, and edge/cloud architectures
- Understanding of unreliable networks and hardware-dependent systems
- Track record working with enterprise customers and their leadership
- Experience building structure in bespoke, low-process environments
- Ability to make decisions with incomplete information and own outcomes
- Willingness to balance customer urgency with scalable portfolio solutions
- Comfort working around hardware and physical systems
What We Do
Robotics has the potential to do so much good, but progress has been slowed by complicated hardware and software integrations, long development cycles, and people's fear of tripping over a robot on their way to work. At Viam, we’re addressing these issues by building a novel robotics platform that relies on standardized building blocks rather than custom code to create, configure and control robots quickly and intuitively. We’re empowering engineers - aspiring and experienced - across industries to solve complicated automation problems with our innovative and developer-friendly software tools. If you are interested in learning more, apply to one of our many open positions. We are hiring!
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