Vice President, Forward Deployed Engineering
Location: Remote (US) | with necessary travel
Reports To: Senior Vice President, Data & AI
About the Role
Rackspace Technology is seeking a visionary Vice President of Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) to build and lead our global Forward Deployed Engineering organisation. This executive will sit at the intersection of AI, enterprise consulting, product engineering and customer transformation.
You will own the strategy, execution and commercial success of Rackspace’s Forward Deployed Engineering practice, partnering with Fortune 500 customers to deliver enterprise AI platforms, agentic applications, data modernization initiatives and production-grade AI systems.
Unlike traditional Professional Services leadership roles, this position requires someone equally comfortable discussing enterprise architecture with CIOs, reviewing production Python code with engineers, and defining multi-year growth strategy with executive leadership.
You will lead a global team of Forward Deployed Engineers, Principal Architects, AI Engineers and Delivery Leaders while shaping Rackspace’s Enterprise AI offerings and building repeatable delivery methodologies that scale globally.
Key Responsibilities
Executive Leadership
- Build and scale Rackspace’s global Forward Deployed Engineering organisation
- Define the long-term vision, operating model and technical strategy for Enterprise AI delivery
- Develop organisational structure, hiring strategy, career progression and engineering excellence programmes
- Lead multiple regional FDE teams across North America, EMEA and APAC
- Establish engineering standards, delivery frameworks and quality metrics
- Foster a culture focused on customer obsession, technical excellence and rapid execution
Customer Leadership
- Act as executive sponsor for Rackspace’s largest strategic AI customers
- Partner directly with CIOs, CTOs, CDOs and business executives throughout complex transformation programmes
- Lead executive workshops translating business strategy into AI roadmaps
- Guide customers from AI strategy through production deployment and enterprise adoption
- Resolve executive escalations and ensure successful customer outcomes
Delivery & Professional Services
Own the successful delivery of Rackspace’s largest AI transformation programmes including:
- Enterprise AI Platforms
- Agentic AI
- LLM Applications
- Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG)
- Multi-Agent Systems
- Knowledge Graphs
- Data Modernisation
- Cloud Migrations
- Enterprise Analytics Platforms
Drive delivery excellence by:
- Standardising delivery methodologies
- Creating reusable accelerators
- Building reference architectures
- Improving delivery velocity
- Reducing implementation risk
- Driving customer adoption
Technical Strategy
Provide executive technical leadership across:
- Enterprise AI Architecture
- LLM Platforms
- Agentic AI
- RAG Systems
- Ontology & Knowledge Graphs
- Data Engineering
- Cloud Platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP)
- Kubernetes
- MLOps
- DevSecOps
- Enterprise Integration
- GPU Infrastructure
- AI Governance
Partner closely with Product Engineering to ensure field learnings influence platform evolution.
Commercial Ownership
Own the commercial success of the Forward Deployed Engineering practice through:
- Practice P&L ownership
- Revenue forecasting
- Delivery utilisation
- Gross margin optimisation
- Services portfolio development
- Sales enablement
- Executive pre-sales support
- Strategic account expansion
- New offering creation
Partner with Sales Leadership to grow AI consulting and implementation revenue.
Talent Leadership
Recruit and develop world-class engineers from software engineering, consulting and AI backgrounds.
Lead teams including:
- Forward Deployed Engineers
- Principal Engineers
- AI Engineers
- Solutions Architects
- Technical Delivery Managers
- Data Engineers
- Platform Engineers
Develop technical career ladders, mentoring programmes and leadership succession plans.
Required Qualifications
- 15+ years leading enterprise software engineering, consulting or AI organisations
- 8+ years managing large engineering organisations
- Experience leading customer-facing engineering or professional services teams
- Proven success building organisations from early-stage growth through enterprise scale
- Strong commercial experience with services P&L ownership
- Experience delivering multi-million-dollar enterprise transformation programmes
- Deep expertise across cloud, software engineering, AI and data platforms
- Demonstrated executive engagement with Fortune 500 leadership
- Track record building high-performing technical organisations
Technical Expertise
Strong understanding of:
- Python
- TypeScript
- React
- Kubernetes
- Docker
- Enterprise Data Engineering
- Vector Databases
- LangChain
- LangGraph
- CrewAI
- OpenAI
- Anthropic
- Azure OpenAI
- AWS Bedrock
- Snowflake
- Databricks
- Palantir Foundry
- Ontology-driven architecture
- Knowledge Graphs
- Enterprise Integration
- CI/CD
- MLOps
- GPU Infrastructure
Hands-on coding experience is highly desirable, although the role primarily focuses on executive leadership.
Preferred Experience
- Experience building a Forward Deployed Engineering organisation
- Leadership within AI-first consulting firms or enterprise software companies
- Experience with Palantir Foundry, AIP or similar enterprise AI platforms
- Previous leadership in Professional Services, Customer Engineering or Solutions Engineering
- Consulting experience with Fortune 500 organisations
- MBA or advanced degree in Computer Science, Engineering or AI
Success Measures
Within the first 12 months, the VP will:
- Build a high-performing global Forward Deployed Engineering organisation
- Increase delivery velocity through standardised methodologies and reusable IP
- Improve customer satisfaction and referenceability across strategic accounts
- Expand AI services revenue through new offerings and executive partnerships
- Strengthen engineering quality, utilisation and delivery predictability
- Establish Rackspace as a recognised leader in enterprise AI implementation
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