Sr. Director, (Applied AI) Forward Deployed Engineering

About Scale AI Scale’s mission is to develop reliable AI systems for the world’s most important decisions. We work with leading enterprises to bring generative AI safely into production—powering real-world impact through rigorous evaluation, deployment, and execution.

The Role

The Sr. Director, Forward Deployed Engineering (US East) will lead Scale’s enterprise customer engagements across the Eastern United States. This role sits at the intersection of customer leadership, applied AI, and execution—owning how Scale partners with Fortune 500 executives to design, build, and deploy AI-powered systems that deliver measurable business outcomes. As a regional leader and peer to Scale’s existing Forward Deployed leadership, you will manage and grow multidisciplinary teams of applied scientists and full-stack engineers, shape how we deliver agentic AI applications in customer environments, and set the bar for executive-level customer engagement. This is a high-impact leadership role in a period of regional expansion and organizational evolution.

You will:

• Lead all US East enterprise customer engagements, serving as the senior technical and delivery executive for Scale’s most strategic accounts.
• Partner closely with Sales, Product, and Engineering leadership to support customer acquisition, expansion, and long-term success.
• Build and manage forward-deployed teams composed of applied scientists and full-stack software engineers, structured into customer-specific technical pods.
• Own end-to-end delivery execution for customer deployments, ensuring reliability, rigor, and measurable business impact.
• Guide teams in building production-grade, agentic AI applications for Fortune 500 enterprises.
• Establish and enforce an evals-first approach to customer deployments, ensuring performance, safety, and reliability standards are met.
• Lead senior-level technical conversations with customer executives, demonstrating Scale’s credibility as a trusted AI partner.
• Support technical upsell conversations by articulating architectural tradeoffs, capabilities, and future-state possibilities (with commercial ownership held by AEs).
• Hire, develop, and mentor forward-deployed leaders and ICs, including training teams on executive-level customer interaction and professional standards.
• Help shape Scale’s regional forward-deployed strategy as part of a broader global and US restructuring.

Ideally you’d have:

• 12+ years of experience in software engineering, applied ML, or AI systems, with significant leadership responsibility.
• Proven experience leading customer-facing technical teams delivering complex systems for large enterprise customers.
• Executive presence and credibility with senior Fortune 500 stakeholders, including experience navigating high-stakes technical discussions.
• Strong technical foundation in either applied machine learning or full-stack / distributed systems engineering (strength in one, fluency in the other).
• Demonstrated ability to translate ambiguous customer needs into concrete technical solutions and delivery plans.
• Experience partnering with sales and product teams in pre-sales, expansion, and delivery contexts.
• A track record of building, scaling, and managing high-performing multidisciplinary teams.

Nice to have:

• Experience deploying generative AI or agentic systems in production enterprise environments.
• Background in consulting, forward-deployed engineering, or professional services for technical products.
• Experience building evaluation frameworks for ML or AI system performance.
• Prior responsibility for regional or multi-account technical leadership.

Leveling Note

This role is flexibly leveled (Director to Sr. Director) based on candidate experience, scope, and demonstrated leadership impact.

*Compensation packages at Scale for eligible roles include base salary, equity, and benefits. The range displayed on each job posting reflects the minimum and maximum target for new hire salaries for the position and may be inclusive of several career levels at Scale; it will be determined during the interview process based on work location and additional factors, including job-related skills, experience, qualifications, interview performance, and relevant education or training. Scale employees in eligible roles are also granted equity based compensation, subject to Board of Director approval. Your recruiter can share more about the spe…