Forward Deployed Engineering Manager

Job Description Company Overview CommerceIQs AI-powered digital commerce platform is revolutionizing the way brands sell online. Our unified ecommerce management solutions empower brands to make smarter, faster decisions through insights that optimize the digital shelf, increase retail media ROI and fuel incremental sales across the worlds largest marketplaces. With a global network of more than 900 retailers, our end-to-end platform helps 2,200 of the worlds leading brands streamline marketing, supply chain, and sales operations to profitably grow market share in more than 50 countries. 10 out of the top 12 CPG brands work with us, including Coca-Cola, Nestle, Colgate-Palmolive, and Johnson & Johnson. Weve raised over $200M from some of the top investors including SoftBank, Insight Partners, and Madrona. Learn more at commerceiq.ai. The Role As CommerceIQs first Forward Deployed Engineering Manager, you will partner closely with our founders and the AI Product Manager to prototype and deploy AIdriven solutions that solve our customers most pressing problems. This is a founding engineering role with high visibility; you will report directly to our co-founder. You will also partner with other members of the executive leadership team who are based at our Mountain View HQ, collaborate with our Bangalorebased engineering team, and engage daily with enterprise customers. You will help define how we work with our most important customers, shape the companys first ever forward deployed engineering function, and contribute to our mission of helping brands win in AIdriven e-commerce. Location / Travel: This position is remote with approximately 50 PERCENT travel expected to client locations. We are only considering candidates based in the Toronto area for this role. What You'll Do - Foster a growing team of FDEs: Attract great talent and build a strong team over time to set the companys FDE function up for success at scale. - Build prototypes with customers: Work alongside our AI Product Manager to understand realworld problems, rapidly scope use cases and create working prototypes. Youll engage in hands-on discovery and convert insights into functional demos for prospective and existing customers. - Integrate data and create new AI agents: Ingest data from disparate sources (ERPs, ecommerce platforms, custom APIs) and build agents that solve the specific use cases uncovered during discovery. This includes turning edgecase business rules into runtimeeditable settings rather than hardcoded logic. - Own AI outcomes: Lead customerfacing demonstrations and proofofconcepts. Youll instrument and tune models using production feedback loops to ensure prototypes deliver measurable outcomes. - Rapidly iterate & generalize: Collaborate with engineering teams in Bangalore to transform prototypes into robust features. Your work will be implemented into our core product - patterns that succeed in one deployment (custom adapters, monitoring dashboards) should be packaged as reusable modules. - Own the full lifecycle: Support engagements from presales scoping through postdeployment refinement. Youll help to negotiate scope, push back on unreasonable asks, and ensure longterm customer success. Additionally, youll act as the technical liaison between customers, product managers, and engineering. - Cultivate customer relationships: Develop deep empathy for our customers business drivers and serve as their advocate. Use clear, engaging communication to convey technical concepts to nontechnical stakeholders, build trust and handle highstakes conversations. What You'll Bring: - Player/coach: An inspirational leader who brings the ability to attract, hire, and develop a strong team of FDEs around you while remaining hands-on in engineering as well as with our customers. - Experienced engineer (5-8 years or more) with a strong foundation in software development (data structures, system design, debugging). Comfortable coding in Python or Java and learning new technologies quickly. - Fullstack & data integration skills: Experience connecting to APIs, working with SQL/NoSQL databases, streaming/ETL pipelines and deploying AI/LLMbased agents. - Customerfacing problem solver: You enjoy working directly with external users, conducting discovery, and translating ambiguous requirements into working solutions. You have excellent communication skills and the ability to simplify complex technical topics. - Rapid prototyper: You are biased towards action and are comfortable delivering minimalviable solutions, collecting feedback and iterating quickly. - Collaborative & global: Youre effective working across time zones with leadership in California and engineering in Bangalore. You embrace CommerceIQs leadership principles of ownership, deep diving into details, getting stuff done, thinking from first principles and winning as a team. - Independent & adaptable: You thrive in ambiguity, can manage your own backlog and priorities, and are motivated by the opportunity to create a new function. - Bachelor's degree, preferably in Computer Science, Mathematics, or a related field. Nice to Haves: - Prior experience in a forwarddeployed, solutions engineering or customer implementation role. Candidates coming from companies known for forwarddeployed engineering (e.g., Palantir, Scale AI, Ramp, etc.) are strongly encouraged to apply. - Familiarity with e-commerce, retail, supplychain or adtech data. - Exposure to largelanguagemodel applications (finetuning, prompt engineering, building retrievalaugmented generation workflows). Check out our LinkedIn page to learn more about what its like to work at CommerceIQ We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, disability status or any other category prohibited by applicable law.