About ForgeVista

We deploy AI into the real world. Not slide decks. Not proofs of concept. Production systems that change how businesses operate.

Three things define how we work: AI Now (we ship with AI daily, not "someday"), CLI Native (the terminal is our cockpit, for every role and every person), and High Agency (you own the outcome and move without waiting for permission).

Before you apply, please read our culture deck. Our culture isn't aspirational. It's how we actually operate. If it doesn't resonate, this probably isn't the right fit. We'd rather you self-select than discover the mismatch after a few interviews.

The Role

This is a player/coach role: you build the Forward Deployed Engineering function while staying close enough to delivery to keep standards real.

In the architect / orchestrator / apprentice framing now circulating in AI talent strategy, you are squarely the architect. You design the operating model, the workflow map, the governance, and the human + agent pod structure that the rest of the team executes inside.

You will own three things:

1) Delivery outcomes (across accounts)

Ensure deployments go from discovery → prototype → production → adoption (not "POC → stall")
Set the bar for what "done" means: evals, instrumentation, reliability, security, change management
Design for apprenticeship: every deployment leaves behind client humans who understand how to operate and improve the system, not just a delivered artifact
Drop into escalations and unblock the hardest technical + human problems

2) The FDE machine (standards, playbooks, training)

Turn field learnings into repeatable playbooks, templates, and reference implementations
Build the "how we do deployments here" operating system (and keep it sharp)
Architect the pod model: how strategist + builders + AI agents compose into a 90-day delivery unit, how pods spin up and wind down, how knowledge transfers across pods
Create onboarding and leveling that produces consistent quality without bureaucracy

3) The team (hiring + leadership)

Hire and develop FDEs (bar-raising, not headcount-filling)
Coach through live deals and live deployments
Build a culture of clear writing, fast learning, and honest feedback

This is not a "director who sits in meetings." It's a director who ships outcomes.

The Profile

We don't care about pedigree. We care about evidence.

You might come from:

Forward deployed / solutions architecture / technical delivery leadership
High-agency technical consulting where you shipped, not advised
Operator-first backgrounds where you became technically dangerous through AI and built a delivery org around that leverage

We're looking for someone who has repeatedly done the hard thing: make new technology work inside real organizations.

You'll thrive here if you've done most of this:

8+ years in roles that required shipping customer-facing outcomes under ambiguity
Led multi-workstream deployments with exec stakeholders and real constraints (security, data, compliance, people)
Built and maintained delivery standards (templates, runbooks, acceptance criteria, evals)
Hired and developed high-performance teams (and removed underperformance quickly and fairly)
Operate comfortably in the CLI and pair with AI agents as part of your default workflow
Can translate between business truth and technical execution without losing fidelity in either direction

You must be aligned with the ForgeVista ethos

AI Now: you ship with AI weekly (and you know where it fails)
CLI Native: you live in reproducible artifacts (commands, repos, runbooks)
High Agency: you see the bottleneck and start moving it forward, no waiting for permission

We call this Founder Mode in our culture deck. At Director level, it shows up as making clear, fast calls that other people can build on, not as a license to bypass the team.

What We Evaluate

1) Can you build a repeatable delivery system?

Not "can you run one heroic project," but "can you make the next 10 deployments better than the last 10."

2) Can you hire and level a team?

Do you have a real bar? Can you coach? Can you make hard calls?

3) Can you ship under pressure?

When it's messy and high-stakes, do you create clarity and forward motion?

4) Do you have the right center of gravity?

ForgeVista's FDE model is BA/operator-first, AI-armed, CLI-native. If you only know how to lead pure engineering teams, or pure consulting teams, you'll fight the ethos.

5) Can you architect the operating model?

This is the architect role in plain language: workflow maps, governance, pod structures, role primitives, leveling, and the human + agent operating model that the function runs on. Can you draw it, write it, defend it, and revise it on real-world feedback, without retreating into either pure consulting frameworks or pure engineering org charts?

How to Apply

Eligibility: This role is open to candidates based in the United States who are authorized to work in the US. We are not sponsoring work visas or considering applicants located outside the US at this time.

Apply through the link below. We evaluate artifacts before resumes. When you apply, you'll be asked to share deployments you've led and the artifacts that came out of them (playbooks, runbooks, eval harnesses, writeups). Show us the work.

What We Offer

$260K–$340K base salary: competitive, benchmarked, paid regardless of outcomes
Discretionary annual incentive: awarded at the leadership team's discretion, tied to function-level outcomes: delivery quality across accounts, team performance, and playbook leverage.
Potential equity stake: as a member of the leadership team, you may be eligible for a meaningful ownership stake through stock options.
Health + development benefits: health, dental, and vision coverage, plus a professional development budget for learning, conferences, and the tools you need to stay sharp.
Define what FDE leadership looks like before the rest of the industry does. Palantir pioneered forward-deployed engineering a decade ago; now OpenAI's Deployment Company, Anthropic's enterprise services firm, and Meta's enterprise unit are racing to scale it. None of their playbooks are settled, and neither is ours. You write ours.
Growth trajectory. Director is the on-ramp to Executive at ForgeVista, where leadership becomes transformational for the business. Three tracks (IC, Manager, Executive); see how we grow.
A team and culture optimized for leverage (AI + CLI + ownership), not consensus
Real authority and real accountability
Remote-first. Travel depends on each client's preference. Director engagements often involve in-person kickoffs, leadership briefings, and key delivery checkpoints, typically 25–50% on-site for clients who prefer in-person collaboration. You set the pattern for the function.

What This Isn't

It's not a "director of process" role
It's not a role where you hide behind titles and meetings
It's not a role for people who need mature org structure to be effective

If that excites you, we should talk.

Director, Forward Deployed Engineering