Lead and manage a team of Forward-Deployed Machine Learning Engineers (FDMLEs) delivering customer-facing AI and ML solutions from prototyping through production deployment and iteration.
Support team growth through coaching, mentorship, and career development while fostering a strong culture of ownership, customer focus, and operational excellence.
Drive execution in ambiguous, fast-paced environments by enabling rapid experimentation, iterative development, and close cross-functional collaboration.
Partner with Federato leadership across Forward Deployed Engineering, Data Science, and Customer Success to align priorities, delivery expectations, and customer outcomes.
Translate strategic AI initiatives into actionable roadmaps, priorities, and delivery milestones, ensuring projects are effectively scoped, staffed, and executed.
Establish and improve agile workflows tailored to forward-deployed AI and ML work, including sprint planning, technical design reviews, backlog grooming, retrospectives, and operational follow-through.
Serve as the primary coordination point across internal teams and customer stakeholders to ensure alignment, transparency, issue resolution, and successful adoption of deployed solutions.
Drive operational excellence through strong communication, documentation, monitoring, and incident-management practices across customer-facing ML systems.

5+ years of experience in machine learning, applied AI, data science, or related technical fields.
2+ years of experience leading or managing technical contributors and cross-functional delivery efforts.
Experience deploying and operating ML or AI systems in production, including customer-facing or operational environments.
Strong understanding of ML systems, LLM applications, agentic workflows, evaluation frameworks, and production monitoring best practices.
Experience working in fast-paced environments with evolving requirements and multiple concurrent workstreams.
Excellent communication, organizational, and stakeholder management skills.
Ability to balance technical depth with strong execution and delivery discipline.

Manager, Forward Deployed Machine Learning Engineering

Key skills