Forward Deployed Engineer Manager
SewerAI Corporation · Full-time · Posted 2w ago
About SewerAI Corporation
SewerAI is transforming underground infrastructure management through AI-powered inspection and risk analysis. Our platform helps contractors, engineering firms, and utilities unlock valuable insights from sewer inspection data—turning hours of manual video review into actionable intelligence in minutes. After doubling our customer base over the past year, we’re now entering an exciting phase of accelerated growth.
About the Role
We're looking for a Tech Lead Manager (TLM) to lead our Forward Deployed Engineering team. This is a player-coach role. The team is two full-time FDEs and a contractor today, and we're hiring more. You'll keep shipping yourself: writing integrations, debugging migrations, and leading the customer conversations that decide whether a deployment succeeds. You'll also build the team and the systems that let it scale.
Today, deployments run on a few people who carry the context in their heads. Your job is to change that. You'll take ownership of technical delivery quality, customer outcomes and team capacity. You'll also turn recurring custom work into reusable tools, patterns and product feedback.
What You Do
Customer ownership
Own the customer relationship from kickoff through go-live and handoff to Customer Success. Customers should always know where things stand, what's next and what's at risk.
Lead technical discovery with utility IT, GIS and operations teams, and with field crews. Learn how they actually work before proposing how SewerAI fits in.
Explain complex technical tradeoffs in plain language to non-technical stakeholders, from field supervisors to public works directors.
Manage expectations directly. Reset timelines, push back on scope that won't work and offer alternatives without damaging the relationship.
Take ownership of escalations on at-risk accounts: get on the call, own the problem and follow through until it's fixed.
Run kickoffs, workshops and go-live sessions. Write status updates that leadership, Sales and the customer can understand without someone explaining them.
Technical delivery
Lead from the keyboard. Take on the hardest integrations, migrations and escalations yourself, then turn what you learn into patterns the team can reuse.
Design and review integrations with CMMS (Cityworks, Cartegraph/OpenGov, Lucity, VUEWorks), GIS (ArcGIS/Esri) and inspection platforms (WinCan, ITpipes).
Own data migrations end to end: extract, map, transform, validate and reconcile historical inspection, asset and media data. Expect missing fields, duplicates and schema drift.
Build internal tooling such as scripts, ETL jobs, validation checks and deployment templates, so each new customer costs less than the last.
Team leadership
Manage the team day to day: 1:1s, onboarding, performance reviews, project assignments and capacity planning.
Run the FDE standup and make the prioritization calls across the live customer portfolio. Decide what gets built, phased, declined or handed to Product.
Work with Sales and Solutions Engineering on scoping and technical feasibility before commitments are made.
Bring recurring integration needs and implementation friction to Product and Engineering, with evidence, so services work becomes product.
Help the team get better at technical work and at communicating with customers.
Who You Are
You have 5+ years as a Forward Deployed Engineer or in a similar hands-on, customer-facing technical role, such as Professional Services, Solutions, Implementation or Field Engineering.
You have 2+ years managing people or leading a technical team.
Your technical foundation is strong. You can read the code, query the data and find the bug yourself.
You've shipped real customer integrations and migrations: APIs, enterprise systems, messy legacy data.
You're excellent with customers. You build trust quickly, communicate proactively, and stay calm and credible when a project is going sideways.
You've worked with customers who aren't technically sophisticated, and you adjust how you communicate without talking down to anyone.
You can tell a customer or an AE "no" or "not yet" and keep the relationship intact.
You want to stay hands-on, and you take the hardest problems yourself rather than delegating them.
You see patterns. A third request for the same custom work is your cue to build a reusable solution.
You manage scope well: clear timelines, early risk calls and honest status updates.
You like mentoring and are rewarded by other people's success.
You're comfortable with startup pace, unclear ownership and processes you'll write yourself.
Technical Skills
Scripting in Python, JavaScript or Bash
Strong SQL and relational database fundamentals
ETL workflows and large-scale data migrations
REST APIs, JSON, webhooks and system integrations
AWS (S3, Lambda, IAM)
Troubleshooting across databases, APIs, files and UI
Day-to-day use of AI coding tools
Good to Have
NASSCO standards (PACP/MACP/LACP) and sewer inspection data
GIS and spatial data: ArcGIS, ArcGIS REST services
CMMS and asset management systems: Cityworks, Cartegraph/OpenGov, Lucity, VUEWorks
Inspection platforms: WinCan, ITpipes
Workflow orchestration (Temporal or similar) and integration platforms (Zapier, Celigo)
Media and large-file ingestion pipelines, SFTP and file-based exchange
Municipal utility, public sector or infrastructure customers
Building delivery playbooks, estimation models or services catalogs from scratch
Compensation & Benefits
Base salary: $160,000–$190,000, plus equity
Medical, dental, vision, basic life and 401(k)
Unlimited PTO
This role requires about 10% travel for customer kickoffs, workshops, go-lives and team offsites.
_______________________________________________________________________
SewerAI is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. We are committed to providing a workplace free from discrimination or harassment on the basis of age, disability, sex, race, religion or belief, gender reassignment, marriage/civil partnership, pregnancy/maternity, or sexual orientation. All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.
New Zealand