Head of Forward Deployed Engineering
Replit
Replit is the agentic software creation platform that enables anyone to build applications using natural language. With millions of users worldwide, Replit is democratizing software development by removing traditional barriers to application creation.
About the role
We’re looking for a Head of Forward Deployed Engineering to build and lead the team responsible for helping our most strategic enterprise customers operationalize Replit inside their organizations.
Reporting to the President and Head of AI, you’ll lead a team operating at the intersection of engineering, product, and customer transformation. Your team will embed deeply with customers, solve hard technical problems, build production systems, and help define how enterprises adopt AI-native software development.
This is not a traditional solutions engineering or post-sales role. Forward Deployed Engineers at Replit are software engineers who work directly with customers to build production systems, deploy AI-native workflows, and turn customer problems into reusable platform capabilities.
This team should be among the most advanced users of Replit and AI-native development workflows inside the company. We expect Forward Deployed Engineers to aggressively use AI agents, automation, and Replit itself to increase leverage and accelerate customer outcomes.
This role requires strong technical depth, product instincts, customer judgment, and the ability to operate at high velocity in ambiguous environments.
In this role you will
Build and lead the FDE organization
Hire and develop a high-talent-density team of Forward Deployed Engineers
Define the hiring bar, operating principles, and execution standards for the organization
Build a team culture centered around speed, ownership, pragmatism, and customer impact
Create systems and tooling that allow the team to scale without becoming process-heavy
Work directly with strategic customers
Partner with engineering leaders, product teams, and executives at some of Replit’s largest enterprise customers
Help customers redesign workflows around AI-native software development
Lead complex technical engagements involving integrations, infrastructure, agents, automation, and internal developer platforms
Unblock high-stakes deployments and help customers move from experimentation to production adoption
Build production systems
Lead teams building real applications and workflows directly inside customer environments
Drive rapid prototyping and iteration cycles with customers
Jump into architecture reviews, debugging sessions, implementation strategy, or live builds when needed
Influence product and platform direction
Identify repeatable customer implementation patterns and turn them into reusable platform capabilities
Partner closely with Product and Engineering to upstream learnings from customer deployments into the core platform
Contribute production-ready code, tooling, integrations, and reference architectures that improve enterprise adoption at scale
Create tight feedback loops between customer environments and Replit’s internal product development teams
Drive business impact
Partner closely with Sales, Field Engineering, and Product on strategic accounts
Improve customer adoption, expansion, retention, and deployment velocity
Act as an executive escalation point for critical customer situations
Help define how Replit scales enterprise adoption globally
Success in this role looks like
Strategic customers successfully deploying Replit into production environments
Faster customer time-to-value and expansion across enterprise accounts
Repeatable deployment patterns becoming reusable platform capabilities
Increased enterprise adoption of AI-native development workflows
A high-talent-density FDE organization operating with speed, ownership, and strong customer impact
Required skills and experience
12+ years of experience in engineering, infrastructure, developer tools, applied AI, or customer engineering environments
Experience leading Forward Deployed Engineering, Applied AI, Solutions Architecture, or Strategic Engineering teams
Deep curiosity around AI-native software development and strong instincts for how AI changes engineering workflows
Experience leading high-performing technical organizations
Strong technical judgment and the ability to operate credibly with senior engineers and executives
Experience building and shipping production systems in fast-moving environments
Strong product instincts and systems thinking
Comfortable operating with ambiguity and minimal process
Excellent communication and customer leadership skills
Strong sense of ownership and urgency
Nice to have
Experience with AI agents, LLM workflows, or developer tooling platforms
Experience supporting Fortune 500 engineering organizations
Startup or founder experience
Experience working closely with Product organizations to shape roadmap direction
This role may not be a fit if
You prefer highly structured environments with clearly defined boundaries
You want to stay purely managerial and far from technical details
You optimize for process over speed
You are uncomfortable operating directly with customers
You prefer maintaining systems over building new ones from scratch
Full-Time Employee Benefits Include:
Competitive Salary & Equity
401(k) Program with a 4% match (US Only)
Health, Dental, Vision and Life Insurance
Short Term and Long Term Disability
Paid Parental, Medical, Caregiver Leave
Flexible Time Off (FTO) + Holidays
Commuter Benefits (In-Office Only)
Monthly Wellness Stipend
Autonomous Work Environment
In Office Set-Up Reimbursement (In-Office Only)
Quarterly Team Gatherings
In Office Amenities (In-Office Only)
Want to learn more about what we are up to?
Interviewing + Culture at Replit
To achieve our mission of making programming more accessible around the world, we need our team to be representative of the world. We welcome your unique perspective and experiences in shaping this product. We encourage people from all kinds of backgrounds to apply, including and especially candidates from underrepresented and non-traditional backgrounds.