Lead Forward Deployed Engineer
The Lead Forward Deployed Engineer (Lead FDE) is a senior, customer-facing leader who owns the outcome thread across complex and strategic customer engagements. Working directly with executive, business, and technical stakeholders, the Lead FDE turns ambiguous priorities into measurable outcomes, establishes the path from opportunity to production value, and ensures the right combination of Forward Deployed, product, engineering, transformation, and platform capabilities are brought together around the customer need.
NTT DATA provides a reasonable range of compensation for U.S.-based positions. The starting pay range for this role will depend on the nature of the role offered and will either be [$155,700 - $259,500], or [$80-$100] if the role is hired as a temporary position. Actual compensation will depend on a number of factors, including the candidate’s relevant experience, technical skills, and other qualifications.
This position may also be eligible for incentive compensation based on individual and/or company performance. If the position offered in temporary, the position will not be eligible for incentive compensation.
This position is eligible for company benefits that will depend on the nature of the role offered. Company benefits may include medical, dental, and vision insurance, flexible spending or health savings account, life and AD&D insurance, short and long term disability coverage, paid time off, employee assistance, participation in a 401k program with company match, and additional voluntary or legally-required benefits.
The Lead FDE combines deep expertise in a relevant specialist discipline with broad understanding of enterprise AI, technology platforms, industry context, commercial models, and company and partner capabilities. They apply judgement across domain, technology, client relationships, and outcome leadership to shape high-impact opportunities, determine the most appropriate delivery route, and guide customers through material investment and delivery decisions.
The Lead FDE provides continuity across the customer lifecycle, from discovery and validation through production delivery, adoption, value measurement, and continuous improvement. They orchestrate specialist FDEs and scalable delivery teams, maintain alignment between customer outcomes and technical execution, and intervene where assumptions, priorities, risks, or delivery decisions threaten the intended value. The Lead FDE does not replace accountable customer ownership, delivery leadership, or managed service responsibilities.
Combining executive-level client emotional intelligence, strong domain and technical credibility, commercial judgement, and outcome leadership, the Lead FDE operates independently in high-ambiguity enterprise environments. They lead complex multi-domain engagements, develop trusted senior relationships, mentor and assure other FDEs, contribute to strategic pursuits, and convert field learning into reusable assets, improved methods, and stronger company capabilities.
Key Responsibilities
• Partner with executive, business, and technical stakeholders to define strategic objectives, priority workflows, measurable outcomes, and the decisions required to achieve them.
• Lead complex discovery, assessment, and solution-shaping engagements, turning ambiguous customer priorities into a coherent portfolio of validated opportunities and delivery decisions.
• Establish and maintain the outcome framework across engagements, including business ownership, baselines, target measures, assumptions, dependencies, and evidence required for progression.
• Direct rapid prototyping, proof points, experiments, and demonstrations, ensuring technical effort is focused on the assumptions most critical to customer value, adoption, and feasibility.
• Provide senior technical and solution judgement across AI, data, integration, architecture, security, privacy, Responsible AI, operational readiness, infrastructure, cost, and scalability.
• Shape strategic opportunities into production-ready work, ensuring architecture direction, backlog, dependencies, acceptance criteria, estimates, governance, and mobilisation are sufficiently mature for scalable delivery.
• Build trusted relationships with executive, business, and technical stakeholders, acting as a senior advisor who can simplify complexity, challenge constructively, and guide material customer decisions.
• Orchestrate specialist Forward Deployed practitioners and teams across industry, transformation, AI Studio, product, AI Factory, architecture, engineering, delivery, and operations around a single customer outcome.
• Lead resolution of complex business, technical, operational, and organisational challenges using sound judgement, structured problem-solving, evidence, and appropriate escalation.
• Identify, qualify, and prioritise high-value opportunities by combining domain context, customer strategy, technology capability, feasibility, adoption requirements, and measurable business impact.
• Determine and recommend the most appropriate delivery route, including AI Studio, company products, AI Factory, transformation services, partner capabilities, reuse, further validation, or stop.
• Maintain executive-level outcome stewardship as work moves into delivery and operation, validating major decisions, changes in assumptions, adoption signals, realised value, and the need to optimise, scale, redirect, or stop.
• Provide engagement-level assurance for Forward Deployed work, reviewing quality, customer readiness, production shaping, reuse, and transition into scalable delivery models.
• Capture field intelligence, customer signals, product feedback, implementation learning, reusable patterns, and recurring constraints, and translate them into improvements to products, platforms, offers, standards, and delivery methods.
• Develop FDE capability through mentoring, coaching, peer review, Candidate residency, accreditation input, knowledge sharing, and creation of reusable playbooks and assets.
• Role may require working at customer sites, company offices, or hybrid delivery locations depending on engagement needs.
Knowledge and Attributes
• Deep domain and business awareness with the ability to understand customer strategy, workflows, economics, operating constraints, industry context, and the measures that determine business value.
• Strong technical credibility across enterprise solution architecture, AI engineering, data, integration, cloud and infrastructure platforms, security, and production technology delivery.
• Broad applied understanding of artificial intelligence, generative AI, agentic systems, RAG, automation, model and tool integration, and the implications of emerging AI technologies for enterprise transformation.
• Strong understanding of production AI considerations including evaluation, security, privacy, Responsible AI, observability, AgentOps, FinOps, resilience, service transition, and operational readiness.
• Exceptional client emotional intelligence, executive communication, consulting, facilitation, stakeholder management, and relationship-building skills, with the ability to establish trust quickly in complex senior customer environments.
• Strong systems thinking, analytical judgement, problem-solving, experimentation, and evidence-based decision-making capabilities across business and technical domains.
• Deep working expertise in at least one relevant specialist area such as AI engineering, architecture, industry, transformation, product, data, or AI infrastructure, with sufficient breadth to lead multidisciplinary engagements.
• Broad knowledge of relevant company and partner platforms, products, accelerators, implementation methods, commercial offers, and reusable assets, and the judgement to determine when and how they should be applied.
• Ability to rapidly understand unfamiliar domain context, including processes, terminology, regulation, data flows, organisational dynamics, user roles, constraints, and business metrics.
• Strong commercial judgement, including the ability to connect solution choices to business value, risk, cost, margin, time to value, adoption, delivery capacity, and the appropriate commercial and delivery model.
• Advanced outcome leadership, including the ability to establish measurable outcomes, challenge assumptions, prioritise evidence, align stakeholders, and drive Build, Iterate, Route, Scale, or Stop decisions.
• Strong reuse, product-feedback, and portfolio mindset, with the ability to distinguish customer-specific needs from patterns, assets, and platform improvements that should be standardised and scaled.
• Ability to communicate complex concepts and trade-offs clearly with executive, domain, business, engineering, architecture, operational, commercial, and risk stakeholders using the appropriate level of detail.
• Ability to operate independently in high-ambiguity situations, maintain momentum across competing priorities, challenge constructively, and make sound decisions with incomplete information.
• Ability to influence senior technical and non-technical stakeholders across organisational boundaries without relying on formal authority, and to align multiple teams around one outcome.
• Strong leadership, collaboration, mentoring, coaching, and knowledge-sharing skills, with a commitment to developing other FDEs and creating scalable customer and practice capability.
Required Qualifications and Certifications
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, Data Science, Business Technology, or a related discipline, or equivalent combination of education and significant relevant professional experience.
• Relevant industry certifications in cloud technologies, solution architecture, data, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, agile delivery, industry domains, or related disciplines are beneficial. Certifications support but do not replace demonstrated Forward Deployed leadership capability and experience.
Required Experience
• Typically 10+ years of relevant experience in AI or software engineering, solution architecture, consulting, customer engineering, product, industry transformation, technology delivery, or related disciplines, including substantial senior customer-facing responsibility.
• Proven experience leading complex enterprise engagements and building trusted relationships with executive, business, technical, and operational stakeholders.
• Demonstrated success as a senior Forward Deployed practitioner, customer engineering leader, solution leader, or equivalent across multiple complex engagements.
• Experience leading ambiguous opportunities from discovery and problem framing through evidence, investment decisions, production shaping, adoption, and measurable impact.
• Experience directing prototypes, proof points, experiments, and solution validation while focusing effort on the assumptions most critical to value and feasibility.
• Experience shaping and assuring enterprise solutions involving architecture, AI, data, integration, security, governance, infrastructure, deployment, and production constraints.
• Experience applying industry, business, or functional context to customer workflows, operating models, KPIs, value drivers, and transformation decisions.
• Experience connecting technical and delivery decisions to customer outcomes, adoption, value realisation, commercial considerations, and scalability.
• Experience orchestrating multidisciplinary teams across product, engineering, platform, industry, transformation, architecture, delivery, operations, and account functions.
• Experience evaluating build, buy, reuse, product, partner, platform, and infrastructure options without defaulting to a single solution path.
• Experience operating independently with senior stakeholders, exercising sound commercial and technical judgement, resolving conflict, and maintaining momentum through ambiguity.
• Experience creating or scaling reusable patterns, reference architectures, playbooks, methodologies, accelerators, product improvements, or other assets from field engagements.
Demonstrated experience mentoring FDEs or FDE Candidates, providing peer assurance, and contributing to capability standards, accreditation, or communities of practice.
NTT DATA provides a reasonable range of compensation for U.S.-based positions. The starting pay range for this role will depend on the nature of the role offered and will either be [$155,700 - $259,500], or [$80-$100] if the role is hired as a temporary position. Actual compensation will depend on a number of factors, including the candidate’s relevant experience, technical skills, and other qualifications.
This position may also be eligible for incentive compensation based on individual and/or company performance. If the position offered in temporary, the position will not be eligible for incentive compensation.
This position is eligible for company benefits that will depend on the nature of the role offered. Company benefits may include medical, dental, and vision insurance, flexible spending or health savings account, life and AD&D insurance, short and long term disability coverage, paid time off, employee assistance, participation in a 401k program with company match, and additional voluntary or legally-required benefits.