Director, Forward Deployed Engineering

About Nebius

Nebius is leading a new era in cloud infrastructure for the global AI economy. We are building a full-stack AI cloud platform that supports developers and enterprises from data and model training through to production deployment, without the cost and complexity of building large in-house AI/ML infrastructure.

Built by engineers, for engineers. From large-scale GPU orchestration to inference optimization, we own the hard problems across compute, storage, networking and applied AI.

Listed on Nasdaq (NBIS) and headquartered in Amsterdam, we have a global footprint with R&D hubs across Europe, the UK, North America and Israel. Our team of 1,500+ includes hundreds of engineers with deep expertise across hardware, software and AI R&D.

The role

Nebius builds the infrastructure serious AI teams run on - GPU clusters, inference runtimes, agent development environments, data pipelines - all of it purpose-built for the most demanding AI workloads. What we are now building is the ecosystem function that ensures the world's best AI companies are successful on Nebius.

As Director of Forward Deployed Engineering, you will build and scale the organization that makes those companies successful on our platform. You will recruit exceptional FDEs, establish the operating model, ensure technical excellence, and turn partner engagements into product improvements and reusable platform assets.

This is not a Sales Engineering leader, Professional Services manager, or traditional Engineering manager role. It sits at the intersection of engineering leadership, AI platform architecture, ecosystem partnerships, and product strategy.

You're welcome to work remotely in the United States.

Your responsibilities will include

Organization Building & Talent

• Build, hire, and develop a world-class Forward Deployed Engineering organization across AI applications, inference, infrastructure, and data.
• Define the talent bar, team structure, career paths, and leadership expectations for the function.
• Coach engineers and managers toward greater independence while maintaining a consistently high technical standard.
• Build an organization and leadership system that scales without depending on individual heroics.

Operating Model & Technical Excellence

• Establish scalable operating models for partner engagement, technical scoping, architecture reviews, escalation, and delivery health.
• Set the technical bar for integrations, proofs of concept, reference architectures, and partner assessments produced by the team.
• Review architectures across AI applications, managed inference, cloud infrastructure, and data platforms, bringing in deeper experts where needed.
• Balance speed with engineering quality and ensure the team builds production-quality work rather than disposable demonstrations.

Executive & Ecosystem Leadership

• Engage credibly with founders, CTOs, senior engineering leaders, and enterprise technical executives as Nebius's senior FDE leader.
• Build trusted relationships across AI platforms, cloud providers, ISVs, open source communities, and strategic technology partners.
• Represent Forward Deployed Engineering in platform planning, ecosystem strategy, and executive investment decisions.
• Create a strong external technical presence through workshops, reference architectures, open source work, events, and developer advocacy.

Field-to-Product & Reusable Leverage

• Treat partner engagements as a continuous product discovery engine and convert field learning into roadmap priorities and shipped platform improvements.
• Ensure every engagement creates reusable value through platform capabilities, reference architectures, tooling, benchmarks, documentation, or automation.
• Prevent the function from becoming one-off consulting work by setting clear boundaries and rewardin