Head of Forward Deployment Engineering - Tavily

About Tavily:

We're building the search engine for AI agents. Our API is designed from the ground up to power RAG and real-time reasoning in AI systems. By connecting LLMs to high quality, trustworthy web content, we help developers build agents that are not only intelligent, but also informed.

We work with some of the most innovative teams in AI, from small startups shaping the ecosystem to the largest enterprises deploying AI at scale. Whether it's powering sales assistants, research copilots, or internal knowledge tools, we're the missing link between LLMs and the real world.

The role

As Head of Forward Deployed Engineering, you'll inherit and lead a growing team of Forward Deployed Engineers while building the operating model for the next stage of scale. You'll establish how the organization hires, executes, prioritizes, and measures success, while remaining hands-on with our most strategic customer engagements.
You'll partner closely with the executive team on enterprise strategy, product direction, and high-impact technical initiatives across the business.

Forward Deployed Engineering owns how Tavily shows up technically in the field. The function sits at the intersection of enterprise customers, Product, Engineering, Sales, Customer Success, and strategic initiatives across the business.
Its charter is to lead the technical execution of Tavily's most strategic customer initiatives—from discovery and POCs through production rollout and expansion—serving as the company's senior technical force for the highest-impact opportunities in the field.

You're welcome to work remotely from within the United States, with regular presence in New York City as needed.

Your responsibilities will include: 

• Define and evolve the FDE organization's vision, operating model, execution playbooks, resourcing strategy, and quarterly priorities.
• Lead, mentor, and scale an existing team of Forward Deployed Engineers by raising the bar for hiring, technical excellence, execution, and customer impact.
• Own the technical strategy for Tavily's most strategic enterprise accounts, from discovery and solution design through POCs, production rollout, and expansion.
• Partner closely with Sales and Customer Success to shape technical strategy for strategic accounts, accelerate enterprise adoption, and drive expansion opportunities.
• Serve as the senior technical voice with executive stakeholders, including CTOs, VPs of Engineering, founders, and technical decision-makers.
• Stay hands-on by leading strategic customer engagements and building reference implementations, retrieval pipelines, agentic systems, production integrations, and technical prototypes on the Tavily API.
• Support select high-impact technical initiatives where senior field expertise is needed, including strategic customer, product, or partner-facing work.
• Build scalable internal assets, including playbooks, demo environments, documentation, reference architectures, tooling, and reusable templates.
• Synthesize customer patterns and technical feedback into clear product and engineering roadmap recommendations.
• Represent Tavily externally in executive customer conversations, strategic engagements, developer communities, conferences, and technical content.

We expect you to have: 

• 10+ years of software engineering experience, including significant experience in customer-facing technical roles such as Forward Deployed Engineer, Solutions Architect, Solutions Engineer, or Sales Engineer.
• 4+ years building or leading customer-facing engineering teams, including hiring, coaching, performance management, and organizational scaling.
• Strong hands-on engineering ability in Python, APIs, distributed systems, and modern software architecture.
• Deep experience designing and building production AI systems, including LLM applications, agentic workflows, retrieval architectures, evaluation systems, and the infrastructure required to operate them reliably at scale.
• Strong familiarity with the modern AI application stack, including agent orchestration frameworks, retrieval infrastructure, evaluation tooling, and production deployment patterns.
• Proven track record leading the technical side of enterprise engagements from initial architecture discussions through successful production deployment and expansion.
• Strong business and commercial judgment, with the ability to balance customer outcomes, engineering investment, and company priorities when making technical and organizational decisions.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills across executive, technical, and developer audiences.
• A builder's mindset with the ability to create structure, operating rhythms, and scalable playbooks in fast-moving, ambiguous environments.
• Based in New York City or willing to relocate, or able to maintain a strong presence with the team and customers.

It will be an added bonus if you have:

• Previous experience leading a Forward Deployed Engineering, Solutions Architecture, Solutions Engineering, or Professional Services organization.
• Experience scaling a customer-facing engineering function through rapid company growth.
• Open-source contributions to AI infrastructure, agent frameworks, retrieval systems, or evaluation tooling.
• Experience speaking at developer conferences or publishing technical content on AI systems, agents, or LLM applications.
• Domain expertise in industries such as financial services, legal, enterprise SaaS, consulting, or AI infrastructure.
• Experience collaborating with model providers, AI platforms, or strategic technology partners. 

Key Employee Benefits:

• Health Insurance: 100% company-paid medical, dental, and vision coverage for employees and families.
• 401(k) Plan: Up to 4% company match with immediate vesting.
• Parental Leave: 20 weeks paid for primary caregivers, 12 weeks for secondary caregivers.
• Remote Work Reimbursement: Up to $85/month for mobile and internet.
• Disability & Life Insurance: Company-paid short-term, long-term, and life insurance coverage.