About the role

In this role, you will build and lead an elite team of engineers tackling some of the most challenging technical problems for our customers. FDEs work directly with customer engineering teams to integrate Applied’s platform, develop custom capabilities and deliver solutions that accelerate autonomy development. In the process, they help translate real-world engineering challenges into product improvements, new platform capabilities, and repeatable workflows that benefit the broader ecosystem.

Operating at the intersection of product, engineering, and customer delivery, this team plays a critical role in ensuring customers successfully deploy and scale Applied’s platform. As the manager, you will drive technical execution across high-impact engagements while building a culture of engineering excellence, ownership, and customer impact.

At Applied Intuition, you will:

• Build, lead and grow a team of Forward Deployed Engineers delivering complex technical solutions for Applied’s most strategic customers

• Own delivery of customer engagements, including platform integrations, custom development, and deployment in production engineering environments

• Work directly with customer engineering teams to solve difficult autonomy development challenges and unblock critical workflows

• Drive high technical standards across the team in system design, debugging, and software quality

• Translate customer problems into scalable solutions, partnering with Product and Engineering to turn custom work into product capabilities

• Identify repeatable patterns from deployments and help build playbooks that scale across customers

• Collaborate with Sales and Solutions Engineering to scope complex engagements and support strategic customer relationships

We're looking for someone who has:

• 5+ years of experience in forward deployed engineering, solutions engineering, or software engineering roles working directly with customers

• Bachelors degree in computer science or engineering related field

• Proficiency in AI developer tools like Cursor or Claude Code, Python, C++, or similar systems languages

• Experience managing engineers delivering complex technical projects

• Strong technical background in software development, distributed systems, or infrastructure

• Experience leading customer-facing engineering engagements involving system integration and custom development

Nice to have:

• Experience with autonomy development, robotics, or simulation platforms

• Background working with automotive OEMs, defense organizations, or robotics companies

• Experience building custom tooling or infrastructure in customer environments