Head of Forward Deployed Engineering

Replit is the agentic software creation platform that enables anyone to build applications using natural language. With millions of users worldwide, Replit is democratizing software development by removing traditional barriers to application creation. ABOUT THE ROLE We’re looking for a Head of Forward Deployed Engineering to build and lead the team responsible for helping our most strategic enterprise customers operationalize Replit inside their organizations. Reporting to the President and Head of AI, you’ll lead a team operating at the intersection of engineering, product, and customer transformation. Your team will embed deeply with customers, solve hard technical problems, build production systems, and help define how enterprises adopt AI-native software development. This is not a traditional solutions engineering or post-sales role. Forward Deployed Engineers at Replit are software engineers who work directly with customers to build production systems, deploy AI-native workflows, and turn customer problems into reusable platform capabilities. This team should be among the most advanced users of Replit and AI-native development workflows inside the company. We expect Forward Deployed Engineers to aggressively use AI agents, automation, and Replit itself to increase leverage and accelerate customer outcomes. This role requires strong technical depth, product instincts, customer judgment, and the ability to operate at high velocity in ambiguous environments. IN THIS ROLE YOU WILL BUILD AND LEAD THE FDE ORGANIZATION - Hire and develop a high-talent-density team of Forward Deployed Engineers - Define the hiring bar, operating principles, and execution standards for the organization - Build a team culture centered around speed, ownership, pragmatism, and customer impact - Create systems and tooling that allow the team to scale without becoming process-heavy WORK DIRECTLY WITH STRATEGIC CUSTOMERS - Partner with engineering leaders, product teams, and executives at some of Replit’s largest enterprise customers - Help customers redesign workflows around AI-native software development - Lead complex technical engagements involving integrations, infrastructure, agents, automation, and internal developer platforms - Unblock high-stakes deployments and help customers move from experimentation to production adoption BUILD PRODUCTION SYSTEMS - Lead teams building real applications and workflows directly inside customer environments - Drive rapid prototyping and iteration cycles with customers - Jump into architecture reviews, debugging sessions, implementation strategy, or live builds when needed INFLUENCE PRODUCT AND PLATFORM DIRECTION - Identify repeatable customer implementation patterns and turn them into reusable platform capabilities - Partner closely with Product and Engineering to upstream learnings from customer deployments into the core platform - Contribute production-ready code, tooling, integrations, and reference architectures that improve enterprise adoption at scale - Create tight feedback loops between customer environments and Replit’s internal product development teams DRIVE BUSINESS IMPACT - Partner closely with Sales, Field Engineering, and Product on strategic accounts - Improve customer adoption, expansion, retention, and deployment velocity - Act as an executive escalation point for critical customer situations - Help define how Replit scales enterprise adoption globally SUCCESS IN THIS ROLE LOOKS LIKE - Strategic customers successfully deploying Replit into production environments - Faster customer time-to-value and expansion across enterprise accounts - Repeatable deployment patterns becoming reusable platform capabilities - Increased enterprise adoption of AI-native development workflows - A high-talent-density FDE organization operating with speed, ownership, and strong customer impact REQUIRED SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE - 12+ years of experience in engineering, infrastructure, developer tools, applied AI, or cust