Sr Manager, Forward Deployment Engineer

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Job Overview:
T-Mobile's Forward Deployment Engineering practice embeds engineers directly inside our business units to ship production agentic AI solutions. The Sr Manager, Forward Deployment Engineering leads the management layer of that practice. You oversee multiple FDE pods across business domains, each one a high-performing innovative team building and deploying real agentic solutions against real business problems, measured by validated ROI.
You'll need to be technical enough to earn the respect of Senior and Principal FDEs, and credible enough with business leaders to own relationships at the Director and VP level. Performance is measured on aggregate ROI outcomes across pods and on the health of the FDE team you build.

Job Responsibilities:

• Technical Guidance & Strategic Presence: Accountable for the technical quality of what the practice ships. Guide direction on high-stakes agentic AI delivery decisions, architectural trade-offs, and cross-domain patterns. Stay close enough to pod teams to hold technical credibility and catch systemic delivery issues before they become domain failures. Ensure responsible AI and data security standards are embedded in practice-level delivery.
• Cross-Pod Coordination & Resource Management: Accountable for the practice having the right people in the right domains. Own allocation and domain assignment planning across pods, identify resourcing imbalances early, and manage headcount planning and the hiring pipeline in coordination with BU leaders and the Sr Director.
• Senior BU Relationship Management: Accountable for BU leadership trusting the practice with their hardest problems. Serve as the senior point of contact at the Director and VP level — escalating structural blockers, negotiating domain prioritization, aligning the FDE roadmap with BU strategic objectives, and representing validated ROI outcomes in senior leadership forums
• Practice Health & Delivery Standards: Accountable for the long-term health of the practice itself. Own practice-level metrics — aggregate ROI, FDE retention, domain assignment health, delivery quality — and set the responsible AI, data security, and privacy standards every FDE deliverable is held to. Partner with TPMs and CoE leadership to keep requirements intake and delivery handoffs running effectively.
• FDE Pod Performance: Accountable for every pod in the practice delivering validated ROI and growing the people in it. Directly manage FDE pods across multiple BU stakeholders — coaching, performance feedback, and career development — with visibility into each pod's delivery health, ROI performance, and team morale through structured check-ins and regular engagement.

Required Education and Work Experience:

• Bachelor's Degree Computer Science, Software Engineering, Data Science, or related technical field. Master's Degree preferred. Relevant equivalent experience accepted.
• 7-10 years Total experience in technical and people leadership roles combined, including 5+ years of progressive people management experience with demonstrated ability to manage other managers or senior technical leads. Hands-on production engineering foundation required. Track record of leading technical teams to measurable business outcomes in ambiguous delivery environments.
• More than 10 years Candidates with 10+ years of combined technical and leadership experience preferred. Ideal background includes having built or scaled a forward deployment, solutions engineering, or embedded technical practice, and experience managing multi-domain programs with rotating team or project structures. (Preferred)

Required Knowledge, Skills and Abilities:

• Technical Depth & Credibility: Sufficient hands-on AI/ML engineering background to guide strategic technical decisions, evaluate engineering quality, and maintain credibility with Senior and Principal FDEs. Must be technically fluent. Familiarity with LLM deployment patterns including RAG architecture, prompt orchestration, and multi-agent system design. Exposure to agentic frameworks (LangChain, LlamaIndex, AutoGen, or similar) and cloud-native infrastructure (AWS primary). Working knowledge of MCP and A2A agent communication standards preferred.
• Management of Managers: Demonstrated experience managing other people managers: coaching manager effectiveness, diagnosing team health through an indirect layer, and holding managers accountable for their teams' outcomes.
• Senior Stakeholder Management: Able to own relationships with BU Director and VP-level stakeholders; communicates practice performance, delivery risks, and strategic recommendations at the executive level. (Required)
• Cross-Functional Leadership: Experience driving outcomes across CoE engineering, BU operations, HR, and Finance without direct authority over those functions.
• Practice Operations: Able to manage headcount, domain assignment cycles, hiring pipelines, and resource allocation decisions that keep multiple pods staffed and performing simultaneously.
• Responsible AI & Risk Management: Sets practice-level standards for responsible AI delivery including data privacy, security, and ethical AI guidelines. Partners with compliance functions to ensure FDE solutions meet T-Mobile's data governance requirements across all domain assignments.

• At least 18 years of age
• Legally authorized to work in the United States

Travel:
Travel Required (Yes/No): Yes
DOT Regulated:
DOT Regulated Position (Yes/No): No
Safety Sensitive Position (Yes/No): No
 

Base Pay Range: $176,000 - $317,400

Corporate Bonus Target: 20%

The pay range above is the general base pay range for a successful candidate in the role. The successful candidate’s actual pay will be based on various factors, such as work location, qualifications, and experience, so the actual starting pay will vary within this range.

At T-Mobile, employees in regular, non-temporary roles are eligible for an annual bonus or periodic sales incentive or bonus, based on their role. Most Corporate employees are eligible for a year-end bonus based on company and/or individual performance and which is set at a percentage of the employee’s eligible earnings in the prior year. Certain positions in Customer Care are eligible for monthly bonuses based on individual and/or team performance. To find the pay range for this role based on hiring location, https://paylookup.t-mobile.com/paylookup?reqID=REQ367610¶dox=1

At T-Mobile, our benefits exemplify the spirit of One Team, Together! A big part of how we care for one another is working to ensure our benefits evolve to meet the needs of our team members. Full and part-time employees have access to the same benefits when eligible. We cover all of the bases, offering medical, dental and vision insurance, a flexible spending account, 401(k), employee stock grants, employee stock purchase plan, paid time off and up to 12 paid holidays - which total about 4 weeks for new full-time employees and about 2.5 weeks for new part-time employees annually - paid parental and family leave, family building benefits, back-up care, enhanced family support, childcare subsidy, tuition assistance, college coaching, short- and long-term disability, voluntary AD&D coverage, voluntary accident coverage, voluntary life insurance, voluntary disability insurance, and voluntary long-term care insurance. We don't stop there - eligible employees can also receive mobile service & home internet discounts, pet insurance, and access to commuter and transit programs! To learn about T-Mobile’s amazing benefits, check out www.t-mobilebenefits.com.

Never stop growing!
As part of the T-Mobile team, you know the Un-carrier doesn’t have a corporate ladder–it’s more like a jungle gym of possibilities! We love helping our employees grow in their careers, because it’s that shared drive to aim high that drives our business and our culture forward. By applying for this career opportunity, you’re living our values while investing in your career growth–and we applaud it. You’re unstoppable!
T-Mobile USA, Inc. is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All decisions concerning the employment relationship will be made without regard to age, race, ethnicity, color, religion, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, religious affiliation, marital status, citizenship status, veteran status, the presence of any physical or mental disability, or any other status or characteristic protected by federal, state, or local law. Discrimination, retaliation or harassment based upon any of these factors is wholly inconsistent with how we do business and will not be tolerated.
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