Senior Manager, Forward Deployed Engineering

Intercom Intercom · Enterprise · San Francisco, CA · R&D

Senior Manager, Forward Deployed Engineering to lead a team focused on scaling Intercom's AI-first platform for complex organizations. This role requires technical leadership, commercial fluency, and customer engagement to ensure successful AI deployments and translate field experience into product roadmap feedback. The focus is on delivering business value through AI solutions in enterprise customer settings.

What you'd actually do

  1. Lead, coach, and nurture a high-performing FDE team while operating under pressure in high-stakes customer engagements.
  2. Own end-to-end outcomes through clarity in communication, speed of execution, tight coordination, and technical quality.
  3. Operate as a player-coach, actively engaging in strategic deals while developing team capabilities. We value leaders who are in the details, and “show, not tell”.
  4. Support complex, seven-figure opportunities with technical guidance, architecture, demos, and product evaluation support, as well as sales expertise.
  5. Codify successful deployments into reusable tools, playbooks, and inputs to the product roadmap, and create leverage for Intercom and our customers.

Skills

Required

  • 5+ years of technical experience in roles such as Software Engineer, Forward Deployed Engineer, Solutions Architect, Applied AI or related technical roles.
  • 3+ years of experience leading technical customer-facing teams, with a proven track record of hiring, mentoring, and managing high-performing teams.
  • Experience selling and deploying AI, data, or highly technical products in complex enterprise environments.
  • Comfortable with a problem space that is ambiguous in nature, and capable of translating that ambiguity into clear signals for Product and Engineering and for positive customer outcomes.
  • Ability to flex working hours to partner with global teams.
  • Excellent communication and presentation skills.

What the JD emphasized

  • AI Customer Service company
  • AI agent Fin
  • AI-first platform
  • AI enhanced support
  • high-stakes deployments
  • complex, large deals
  • ambiguous customer engagements
  • high commercial fluency
  • tight feedback loop with our R&D teams
  • translate field experience into sharp, actionable feedback
  • codifying what works in the field into tools and playbooks
  • enterprise deployments
  • shape how FDE operates at scale
  • technical customer-facing teams
  • selling and deploying AI, data, or highly technical products in complex enterprise environments
  • problem space that is ambiguous in nature
  • seven-figure opportunities

Other signals

  • AI-first platform
  • AI agent Fin
  • AI enhanced support
  • AI Customer Service company
  • deployments result in tangible success for our customers
  • winning complex, large deals
  • navigating ambiguous customer engagements
  • technical execution and the business value outcomes
  • translate field experience into sharp, actionable feedback that shapes our roadmap
  • codifying what works in the field into tools and playbooks that create leverage for the wider organization
  • enterprise deployments
  • shape how FDE operates at scale