Forward Deployed Lead

Who we’re looking for

• Customer relationship experience: You understand what customers truly care about and how to communicate effectively through including in challenging situations. You build trust that withstands complexity.
• Technical oversight: Enough engineering depth to read code, hold your own in architecture discussions, and know when a technical decision is risky. You've been through the full cycle from concept to deployment.
• Product and commercial sense: You operate as an embedded insider. You learn the customer's business from the inside, including where revenue comes from, which workflows matter, and who holds budget, and use that to make sharp calls about what to build, what to sequence, and where the product can credibly expand across the org. You distinguish where the product is the real bottleneck from where execution or change management is, say no to requests when the tradeoffs call for it, and feed specific, evidence-backed signals back to the engineering team.
• A flexible mindset: You're resourceful, hands-on when needed, and committed to getting the job done. You don't wait for perfect information; you start the ball rolling and make things happen. You are comfortable in situations with constantly changing requirements and conflicting objectives.
• Relevant experience: 10+ years in product or engineering leadership roles where execution and customer trust were critical to success. Experience leading cross-functional delivery teams in fast-moving, high-stakes environments.
• Communication skills: You can translate between product, technical, and business stakeholders, ensuring everyone understands what's being built and why it matters.
• Problem-solving orientation: You're comfortable navigating ambiguity, identifying blockers early, and finding creative solutions to keep projects moving forward.
• Comfort with travel. You'll be on-site with clients regularly, and your presence will matter.

What you’ll do

• Own the day-to-day customer relationship : Join calls, capture feedback, and keep customers informed. Maintain clear alignment between what's promised and what's being delivered. Be the trusted voice that customers rely on.
• Lead technical execution: Work across the full project lifecycle—from requirements gathering and system design to coding, testing, deployment, and support. You'll be the technical expert guiding implementation decisions.
• Deliver results: Track milestones, systematically unblock teams, push projects across the finish line. Overdeliver on impact and ensure customers see meaningful, measurable outcomes.
• Facilitate customer discovery: Run discovery sessions to uncover underlying needs, translate challenges into clear plans for engineers, and ensure you deeply understand the customer's business context.

About the position

At HTEC, customers come to us with business problems they want to solve through AI: increasing revenue, reducing cost, and transforming customer service. Your job is to turn these problems into robust AI solutions that deliver business value. As a Forward Deployed Lead , you'll work directly with customers to understand their challenges, then guide multidisciplinary teams to design and build solutions that actually work. You'll own the customer relationship and keep everything on track — making sure the right thing gets built, and customers see real results.

Benefits

• Variety over predictability: You'll work across different customers, industries, and AI applications. Each project brings new challenges and learning opportunities. You won't be refining the same product quarter after quarter.
• Balance of autonomy and collaboration: You'll own customer relationships and delivery, but you'll work closely with engineering teams daily. Success requires both independent decision-making and collaborative problem-solving.
• Professional services context: Building for clients is different from building your own product. It requires adaptability, strong relationship skills, and comfort with changing priorities. It's not for everyone, but for the right person, it's incredibly rewarding.
• Remote and In-person collaboration : Though we are a remote team, our team only thrives through collaboration and open communication. Our expectation from every team member is to embody this mindset.