Forward Deployed Engineering Team Lead

About the Team

Forward Deployed Engineering connects Aircall's AI Voice Agent (AIVA) and AI Messaging Agent (AIMA) to real-world customer workflows, turning possibility into production. The team sits within Customer Solutions & Applied AI and works cross-functionally with Product, Engineering, Sales, Solutions, and Customer Success, globally across EMEA, AMER, and APAC. This role owns the FDE motion for one region, reporting to the SVP, Customer Solutions & Applied AI.

About the Role

The FDE Lead is a player-coach, not a traditional people-manager. You'll still be building: personally configuring, deploying, and debugging AI Agent solutions on real customer engagements, because the fastest way to raise the bar for your team is to keep raising your own. You'll also coach the regional FDE team, own the region's AIVA number, and turn what you build yourself into the playbooks and frameworks the team runs on.

Your remit doesn't stop at FDE. You are helping drive the agentic revolution across the whole region, educating our internal teams, collaborating with our marketing team, impact the whole customer journey in your region. 

Core Responsibilities

• Co-own the AIVA number for the region with the regional GM, partnering with AEs, AMs, and CSMs on pipeline and revenue targets, and staying personally accountable for hitting it.
• Stay hands-on and technical: personally configure, build, and deploy AI Agent solutions on a portfolio of strategic or complex accounts, leading by building rather than only reviewing.
• Coach and upskill the regional FDE team on technical execution, agent configuration, and deployment quality through pairing and hands-on review, not just process.
• Build and evolve the global playbooks, reference architectures, and deployment frameworks the team runs on by compounding the team’s knowledge and expertise.
• Drive the region's AIVA go-to-market motion, embedding pipeline hygiene, forecasting discipline, and clear input/output KPIs across the team.
• Run enablement and upskilling sessions in the region, collaborating with the Enablement team so the wider organisation can speak to and support agentic adoption.
• Represent field reality to Product and Engineering, translating what you and the team are building, and where you hit friction, into roadmap input.
• Lead cross-functional initiatives that grow agentic adoption region-wide, coordinating with Marketing, Support, and other GTM teams as needed.

What We're Looking For

We're looking for builders, not career managers — but builders who also have the seniority and business judgement to own a regional number and be credible in front of VP and C-suite stakeholders, internally and with customers. Depth of hands-on experience matters as much as a demonstrated ability to think commercially.

• Hands-on technical depth: 5–6+ years in forward deployed engineering, solutions engineering, technical consulting, or a comparable role, with a proven track record of personally building, configuring, and shipping integrations or agent solutions, not just directing others who do.
• Technical fluency: comfortable with APIs, integrations, and at least one programming language, with the technical aptitude to quickly get hands-on with new agent capabilities as they ship.
• Commercial and business acumen: able to align technical delivery with revenue outcomes — deal structures, forecasting, pipeline hygiene, and how a deployment translates into the region's AIVA number.
• Executive stakeholder engagement: proven experience engaging and influencing VP and C-suite stakeholders, both internally and at customer organisations, without losing technical credibility.
• People leadership through coaching: demonstrated ability to raise a team's technical bar by building alongside them and reviewing their work hands-on, not by managing from a distance.
• Strategic thinking: able to scope new use cases and opportunities from ambiguity, not only execute against a defined brief.
• Track record of ownership: a clear history of taking complex, cross-functional projects from idea to delivered outcome, and being accountable for the result.
• Entrepreneurial mindset: treats the region like a startup within a startup and doesn't wait for permission to fix what's broken.

Nice to haves

• Experience in conversational AI, voice AI, or contact centre technology.
• Experience with CRMs, help desks, or System-of-Truth integrations.
• Prior experience in an overlay or specialist GTM motion.