Director, Forward Deployed Engineering

About Viam Founded by Eliot Horowitz, co-founder and former CTO of MongoDB, Viam is a novel robotics engineering platform that lets you configure, control, and manage robots intuitively and quickly. We’re inspiring a generation of engineers to solve complicated automation problems with our uniquely powerful suite of software tools. We’re a ~100-person company headquartered in New York City. About the Role Hybrid 3 days/week in NYC office, with occasional travel to customer sites We're looking for a Director of Forward Deployed Engineering to lead the team responsible for getting Viam's customers into production. You'll manage a team of five engineers working across our most strategic accounts, own the technical approach to each deployment, and serve as the senior technical partner to our customers' engineering and operations leaders. This is a leadership role for someone who is still technical. You'll spend your time on architecture decisions, design reviews, coaching, and customer conversations. Prior professional robotics experience isn't required, but you should be comfortable around hardware and physical systems, and able to get fluent in a new platform quickly. What you’ll own: Manage a team of five forward deployed engineers: coaching, performance, hiring, and how they are resourced across accounts. Own the technical approach across deployments and make the architecture and prioritization calls. Be the senior technical voice with customer leadership, from kickoff through escalation. Work with Viam leadership on account direction, and keep them current on progress, risks, and blockers. Drive deployments to production: hold the schedule, unblock what's stuck, and change approach when a site demands it. Turn field learnings into platform priorities with Product and Engineering. What you bring: Experience managing engineers who deploy software in customer environments. Deep systems experience and the ability to get fluent in an unfamiliar platform quickly. You can