Regional Director, Forward Deployed Engineering

SpaceX was founded under the belief that a future where humanity is out exploring the stars is fundamentally more exciting than one where we are not. Today, SpaceX is actively developing the technologies to make this possible, with the ultimate goal of making life multiplanetary and expanding consciousness to the stars. SpaceXSI is building Super Intelligence to help humanity understand the universe. Our teams are building the full Super Intelligence stack: from our Colossus supercomputers, to Grok models, to our suite of applications, including Grok Bot, Grok Build, Grok Imagine, Grok Voice, and X. We're creating a powerful flywheel where more compute trains better models, better models power more useful products, and what we learn from people using those products shapes what we build next. REGIONAL DIRECTOR, FORWARD DEPLOYED ENGINEERING We're building a Forward Deployed Engineering team to close the gap between the value our enterprise customers expect from SpaceXSI and the value they're actually getting. FDEs don't advise, they embed directly with customer engineering teams, build production-grade SpaceXSI workflows, and transfer the habits and culture that compound long after the engagement ends. The measure of success is what's different at day 30, not what got shipped. We're looking for a Regional Director, Forward Deployed Engineering to lead and help scale this team. RESPONSIBILITIES: Own the full arc from technical discovery to executive close, partnering with Sales and Account teams to qualify opportunities, leading architecture reviews, surfacing integration complexity and infrastructure constraints, and scoping engagements with enough precision to de-risk delivery before a line of code is written Build and present proposals that translate ambiguous customer problems into concrete, time-boxed deliverables with clear ROI; sell the vision and the plan to C-suite stakeholders who need to believe in both the outcome and the team delivering it; drive deal strategy on strategic accounts; your technical credibility is a direct lever on close rates for six- and seven-figure engagements; serve as executive technical sponsor on your region's highest-priority engagements and manage stakeholder relationships from IC engineers to C-suite Ensure delivery quality across your team's projects: appropriate scoping, milestone tracking, technical standards, and clean handoffs to customer engineering teams. Translate between business outcomes and technical implementation in both directions Identify and escalate product gaps, integration friction, and recurring customer pain back to Product and Engineering with enough specificity to drive roadmap decisions; Manage active engagements: escalate on complex builds, coach FDEs on scoping and delivery decisions, and step in directly on accounts where the stakes are highest Build reusable playbooks that make the broader FDE org more capable over time; lead, develop, and scale a team of 6-8 Forward Deployed Engineers working strategic FDE projects; hire top-tier FDE talent; set clear expectations, technical performance standards, and career growth paths for a team where "excellent" means actually shipping in production Coach FDEs through the hardest problems in the field, scoping under deal pressure, building alongside senior technical stakeholders, and knowing when to protect scope vs. when to flex; build and scale the partner FDE track, train, enable, and hold the quality bar for GSI and consulting partners who carry the FDE motion forward at volume BASIC QUALIFICATIONS: Experience directly managing a team of engineers who build and ship production software Professional software development experience in Python, JavaScript, or TypeScript Experience building and deploying AI-powered workflows in production environments PREFERRED SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE: Leadership experience in forward deployed engineering, data science, machine learning engineering or software engineers Debugging model failures in production AI systems Scoping six- and seven-figure technical engagements with Sales and presenting them to C-suite and engineering leadership buyers Enabling GSI or consulting partners to deliver technical engagements ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS: Onsite role: must be able to work in person at the San Francisco or New York or Austin office COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS: The annual compensation range for this role is listed below. Annual Salary: $350,000 - $400,000 USD Your actual level and base salary will be determined on a case-by-case basis and may vary based on the following considerations: job-related knowledge and skills, education, and experience. Base salary is just one part of our total rewards package at SpaceXSI, which also includes equity, comprehensive medical, vision, and dental coverage, access to a 401(k) retirement plan, short & long-term disability insurance, life insurance, and various other discounts and perks.