Sr Manager, Forward Deployment Engineer

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About the role

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, overseeing multiple FDE pods across business domains. Each pod is a high-performing, innovative team building and deploying real agentic solutions against business problems, measured by validated ROI. You will need to be technical enough to earn the respect of Senior and Principal FDEs while maintaining credibility with business leaders at the Director and VP level. Performance is measured on aggregate ROI outcomes across pods and the health of the FDE team you build.

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.

Requirements

• Bachelor's Degree in 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.
• 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.
• At least 18 years of age and legally authorized to work in the United States.
• Travel is required for this role.

Skills

• 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.
• 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.

Pay

Base pay range: $176,000 - $317,400. The successful candidate’s actual pay will be based on work location, qualifications, and experience. Most Corporate employees are eligible for an annual bonus target of 20% based on company and/or individual performance.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance
• Flexible spending account
• 401(k) with company match
• Annual stock grant and employee stock purchase plan
• Paid time off (up to 4 weeks for new full-time employees, ~2.5 weeks for new part-time employees) and up to 12 paid holidays annually
• Paid parental and family leave
• Family building benefits and back-up care
• Enhanced family support and childcare subsidy
• Tuition assistance and college coaching
• Short- and long-term disability coverage
• Voluntary AD&D, accident, life, and long-term care insurance
• Mobile service and home internet discounts
• Pet insurance
• Commuter and transit programs
• Access to free, year-round money coaches