Head of Forward Deployed Engineering

Posted 2 Days Ago
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San Francisco, CA, USA
In-Office
240K-300K Annually
Senior level
Software
The Role
Leads and builds the forward deployed engineering function, owning post-sale customer integrations, AI workflow deployments, adoption, and account expansion. Connects Flow with PLM, ALM, CAD, simulation, and issue-tracking systems; converts pilots into production deployments; develops repeatable implementation playbooks; and feeds customer insights into product and engineering roadmaps. The role combines team leadership, hands-on coding, technical customer engagement, and collaboration with sales, product, and engineering.
Summary Generated by Built In

About Flow

Flow Engineering is an AI-native requirements platform for modern engineering organizations, enabling hardware teams to collaborate with AI agents to design, validate, and evolve complex systems with speed and rigor.

About the role

Flow is seeking a Head of Forward Deployed Engineering to lead the team that turns signed customers into deeply embedded, growing accounts. Our customers are systems and engineering leaders at aerospace, defense, automotive, and hardware companies, and the value they get from Flow depends on how well it connects to their existing tools and how quickly their teams adopt AI-driven workflows. You will own that outcome.

This role sits at the intersection of engineering, product, and revenue. Sales engineers own the technical win before a deal closes. You and your team own everything after: integrating Flow into each customer's engineering stack, building AI workflows around their real processes, driving usage across teams, and expanding accounts into new programs, sites, and business units.

What you'll do

  • Build and lead the forward deployed engineering function, including hiring, setting the operating model, and defining how the team works with sales, product, and engineering.

  • Own customer integrations end to end, connecting Flow to the PLM, ALM, CAD, simulation, and issue tracking tools our customers already rely on.

  • Design and deploy AI workflows tailored to each customer's requirements and systems engineering process, and turn the patterns that work into repeatable playbooks.

  • Own product growth and usage within accounts: track adoption, identify where teams are stuck, and drive Flow from a single team to broad use across an organization.

  • Own customer expansion, partnering with account executives to identify new programs, teams, and use cases, and building the technical case for growing each account.

  • Take clean handoffs from sales engineers on pilots and convert them into successful production deployments.

  • Feed what you learn in the field back to product and engineering, and influence the roadmap based on what customers actually need.

  • Stay hands-on: you will write code, build integrations, and sit with customer engineers when it matters.

About you

  • 7+ years in forward deployed engineering, solutions engineering, software engineering, or a technical customer-facing role, with 2+ years leading a team.

  • Strong technical foundation: you can build integrations, reason about APIs and data models, and understand how software fits into a complex engineering stack.

  • Hands-on experience building with LLMs or deploying AI-driven workflows in production for customers.

  • A track record of driving adoption and expanding accounts, not just delivering projects.

  • Comfortable operating across a customer organization, from individual engineers up to VPs and program leads.

  • Able to build a function from an early stage, balancing hands-on execution with setting structure for a growing team.

  • Comfortable in a fast-moving environment where the product, the customer base, and the team are all scaling quickly.

Nice to have

  • Familiarity with requirements, systems engineering, PLM, or ALM tooling (Jama, DOORS, etc.)

  • Background in or working with defense, aerospace, or regulated hardware environments.

  • Experience with security and compliance requirements common in these industries (ITAR, CMMC, on-prem or restricted deployments).

Skills Required

  • 7+ years in forward deployed engineering, solutions engineering, software engineering, or a technical customer-facing role
  • 2+ years leading a team
  • Ability to build integrations and reason about APIs and data models
  • Strong understanding of complex engineering software stacks
  • Hands-on experience building with LLMs or deploying AI-driven workflows in production for customers
  • Track record of driving customer adoption and expanding accounts
  • Ability to work with engineers, VPs, and program leads across customer organizations
  • Ability to build an early-stage function while balancing hands-on execution and team structure
  • Comfort working in a fast-moving, rapidly scaling environment
  • Familiarity with requirements, systems engineering, PLM, or ALM tooling such as Jama or DOORS
  • Background in defense, aerospace, or regulated hardware environments
  • Experience with ITAR, CMMC, on-premises, or restricted deployment requirements
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The Company
HQ: San Francisco, CA
14 Employees
Year Founded: 2017

What We Do

Systems engineering is broken. Despite their desperation, engineers' tools are stuck in the dark ages. Engineers are forced to use Word documents and email to stay on the same page, with no real way to collaborate and iterate designs together. Our mission is to vastly accelerate hardware design by building software tools that accelerate the baseline engineering process worldwide. Our product, Flow, is a requirements tool, built for agile teams, that helps teams to bring products to market faster by seamlessly integrating and synchronising their engineering models. Flow is helping teams design their next-generation products, from heavy-duty hydrogen-powered trucks, Electric Vehicles for inner cities, to satellites and rockets. Flow has raised over $9M in Seed funding. Our investors include EQT Ventures, and former C-level execs and leaders from Microsoft, SAP and Unity.

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