Engagement Director - Forward Deployed Engineering

The Engagement Director is Avathon's most senior client-facing delivery leader — accountable for the commercial health, executive relationships, and strategic outcomes of our largest and most complex customer engagements. Where a Program Manager runs the plan, the Engagement Director owns the partnership. You operate at the intersection of delivery accountability and business development, ensuring that every engagement Avathon undertakes becomes a reference win, a contract expansion, and a long-term strategic alliance.

You lead multiple concurrent engagements across strategic accounts, managing cross-functional FDE teams — program managers, technical architects, AI engineers, and change management leads — while maintaining direct executive sponsorship relationships at the customer. You are equally at home in an operational steering committee and a C-suite business review, and you bring the commercial acumen to identify, shape, and close expansion opportunities from within the delivery motion.

Key Responsibilities

Strategic Account Leadership

• Own executive relationships at the VP, SVP, and C-suite level across Avathon's strategic accounts — serving as the trusted senior partner who connects delivery outcomes to business value

• Define and drive the long-term engagement strategy for each account: expansion roadmap, capability phasing, success milestones, and multi-year partnership vision

• Lead executive business reviews (EBRs) and steering committee meetings — presenting progress, value realization metrics, and forward-looking roadmap with authority and credibility

• Identify, shape, and advance expansion opportunities within existing accounts — new use cases, additional modules, expanded user populations, and adjacent business units

• Serve as the ultimate escalation point for client concerns, commercial issues, and strategic misalignments — resolving them with urgency and executive presence

Engagement Governance & Delivery Oversight

• Oversee the delivery health of multiple concurrent engagements — setting governance standards, holding program managers accountable to scope, schedule, and quality, and intervening on at-risk programs

• Establish and enforce engagement governance frameworks: RAID management, milestone tracking, change control, financial reporting, and executive communication cadences

• Ensure each engagement is staffed with the right mix of skills, that resource plans are defensible, and that team performance is actively managed and developed

• Own engagement P&L — tracking revenue recognition, managing cost to deliver, forecasting margins, and optimizing profitability without compromising outcomes

• Drive continuous improvement across the FDE delivery practice — institutionalizing lessons learned, refining delivery playbooks, and raising the standard of execution with every engagement

Commercial & Revenue Accountability

• Partner with Sales and Account Management to shape statements of work, commercial terms, and engagement structures that are both compelling to clients and commercially sound for Avathon

• Own renewal, upsell, and expansion deal qualification and progression within the delivery motion — converting delivery trust into commercial growth

• Develop and present business cases and ROI analyses that demonstrate Avathon's value to both economic buyers and operational stakeholders

• Provide pipeline visibility and account-level revenue forecasts to FDE and executive leadership, with the precision and confidence of a business owner

• Champion customer reference-ability — driving the conditions that produce case studies, executive testimonials, and public advocacy for Avathon's platform

Team Leadership & Organizational Development

• Lead, develop, and inspire a team of Program Managers and Delivery Leads — setting a high performance bar, coaching through complexity, and building organizational capability

• Create clarity of roles, decision rights, and accountability structures across complex multi-team engagements — ensuring alignment without creating bureaucracy

• Model Avathon's leadership culture in the field: operating with ownership, urgency, and intellectual honesty under pressure

• Build the talent pipeline for the FDE practice — identifying high-potential team members, creating stretch opportunities, and partnering with recruiting on future hiring needs

• Represent FDE interests in cross-functional forums with Product, Engineering, Sales, and Marketing — ensuring the voice of the field shapes platform and go-to-market decisions

Client Value Realization

• Define success metrics and value realization frameworks at engagement kickoff — ensuring outcomes are measurable, commercially relevant, and tracked throughout delivery

• Drive adoption and change management at the executive and operational levels — aligning client leadership around the behavioral and process changes required for AI-led operations

• Lead post-go-live value reviews that tie platform utilization to business KPIs (uptime improvement, cost reduction, cycle time, revenue impact) and frame the case for next investments

• Capture and synthesize strategic insights from the field — customer priorities, competitive intelligence, platform gaps — and deliver them as structured input to Avathon's roadmap and strategy

Preferred Qualifications

• 12+ years of experience in enterprise technology delivery, management consulting, or professional services — with at least 4 years in a senior engagement leadership or client partner role

• Proven track record managing strategic accounts in excess of $5M ACV — owning P&L, executive relationships, and commercial growth within the delivery motion

• Experience leading complex, multi-workstream AI, data platform, or OT/industrial technology deployments in asset-intensive industries (energy, manufacturing, mining, aerospace, or logistics)

• Demonstrated ability to build and manage high-performing cross-functional delivery teams in fast-paced, client-embedded environments

• Strong commercial acumen — able to structure engagements, read contracts, manage margin, and identify and advance expansion opportunities with or without a dedicated sales resource

• Executive communication and presence: able to command a room of C-suite stakeholders, deliver difficult messages with clarity, and build lasting advisory-level trust

• Familiarity with AI/ML platform deployments and the organizational change required to adopt data-driven and autonomous operations in industrial environments

• Experience with program governance frameworks (PMI, PRINCE2, SAFe, or equivalent) and the judgment to apply them proportionally — not bureaucratically

• Willingness and ability to travel up to 80%; based in Pleasanton, CA or Austin, TX

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Computer Science, Business, or a related field; MBA or advanced degree preferred

• PMP, PgMP, or equivalent program/engagement management certification is a plus

• An active U.S. Government security clearance is advantageous

• Excellent problem-solving, executive communication, and organizational leadership skills

• Must be authorized to work in the United States without current or future company sponsorship

Compensation & Benefits

• California Base Salary:  $170,000 - $220,000

• Performance bonus tied to account growth and delivery outcomes

• Equity in the form of stock options

• Comprehensive health, dental, and vision coverage

• 401(k) participation

• Generous PTO and company holidays

• Ongoing learning and development opportunities