Sr Manager Forward Deployed Engineering, AWS Forward Deployed Engineering

About the role

A Senior Forward Deployed Engineering Manager (Senior FDE Manager) leads multiple pods of FDEs across several strategic enterprise customers, defining the delivery model, engineering standards, and talent strategy for the FDE practice at scale. Senior FDE Managers own organizational-level outcomes — they set the technical direction across multiple concurrent customer programs, build and scale the FDE team, and drive the mechanisms that ensure consistent engineering excellence and measurable business impact across the entire portfolio. Senior FDE Managers operate at org-level scope. They lead 15–30+ engineers, influence technical decisions across multiple customer engagements and AWS teams simultaneously, and define what "great" looks like for forward-deployed AI engineering management. They represent the FDE practice to AWS senior leadership and customer C-suite executives, balancing strategic vision with operational execution.

Responsibilities

• Lead the FDE delivery organization.
• Own delivery across multiple customer engagements and FDE pods.
• Staff and structure teams for optimal customer coverage.
• Define engagement models, staffing strategies, and delivery cadences.
• Ensure consistent engineering quality across all active programs. Requires 30–50% travel.
• Define technical strategy and standards.
• Set the technical direction for the most complex customer AI programs spanning your organization.
• Align technical strategy with adjacent AWS teams.
• Be a key influencer for strategic decisions, bringing technology and industry context to business decisions.
• Resolve escalations and drive closure with peers, Directors, and stakeholders.
• Own production excellence at organizational scale.
• Define operational standards, evaluation frameworks, and production readiness criteria for AI systems across your organization.
• Establish mechanisms that ensure AI systems remain healthy across all active engagements.
• Drive improvements that enable the organization to insist on the highest operational excellence standards.
• Build and scale the team.
• Hire, develop, and retain FDE talent across levels.
• Coach and develop FDE Managers.
• Drive performance management, succession planning, and organizational health.
• Create the talent pipeline for the FDE practice.
• Define hiring bar and calibration standards.
• Accelerate transformation at portfolio level.
• Identify systemic opportunities to expand AI adoption across multiple customer organizations.
• Create accelerators and reusable platforms that reduce time-to-value.
• Influence AWS product roadmaps based on patterns observed across customers.
• Feed learnings back into AWS at the organizational level.

Basic Qualifications

• 10+ years of engineering experience
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, a related field, or equivalent experience
• 5+ years of engineering management experience, including managing managers or large engineering teams (15+)
• 8+ years of experience leading the design and architecture of large-scale production systems
• Experience defining technical strategy and delivery standards while managing teams across multiple concurrent programs or customer engagements
• Experience communicating technical and organizational strategy to executive audiences (VP/C-suite level)

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience building and scaling engineering organizations focused on AI/ML production systems
• Experience with enterprise-scale agentic workflows, multi-agent orchestration, or AI system governance
• Experience creating delivery models or engineering mechanisms adopted across an organization
• Experience influencing product roadmaps through customer engagement patterns
• Experience building engineering talent pipelines and driving organizational hiring strategy
• 6+ years of senior leadership development and talent management experience

Pay

Base salary ranges by location:

• USA, CA, Mountain View: $253,100 – $342,300 USD annually
• USA, CA, San Francisco: $253,100 – $342,300 USD annually
• USA, MA, Boston: $220,100 – $297,700 USD annually
• USA, NY, New York: $242,100 – $327,500 USD annually
• USA, VA, Arlington: $220,100 – $297,700 USD annually
• USA, VA, Herndon: $220,100 – $297,700 USD annually
• USA, WA, Bellevue: $220,100 – $297,700 USD annually
• USA, WA, Seattle: $220,100 – $297,700 USD annually