Senior Forward Deploy Engineer

About the Company

Armada is a full-stack edge infrastructure company delivering compute, connectivity, and sovereign AI/ML to some of the world’s most remote places. Named one of Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies, Armada’s solutions are deployed in over 60 countries globally for organizations ranging from energy to defense.

With over $200 million in funding, Armada is backed by top investors such as Microsoft (M12), Founders Fund, and has strategic partnerships including Starlink, Skydio, and NVIDIA. We are looking for the most brilliant minds in the world to join us.

Working at Armada means taking ownership, driving autonomy, and delivering impact. You’ll tackle challenges that haven’t been solved before and help build something transformative from the ground up. What you do here will not only define your career but help further Armada’s mission to bridge the digital divide for customers around the world.

About the Role

The Senior Forward Deploy Engineer for AMER is a hybrid role responsible for hands-on deployment execution and ongoing technical account ownership across the United States and Canada. This role combines the execution depth of a Forward Deploy Engineer with the long-term ownership and customer leadership of a Technical Account Manager.

During early engagements, the Senior FDE leads platform bring-up, deployment execution, and initial workload onboarding. Once customers are live, the same engineer remains the primary technical owner, driving adoption, operational maturity, reliability, and expansion across sites and use cases.

This role reports into the Sr. Director of Customer Success & Delivery, Americas & US Federal and is intentionally designed to avoid fragmented ownership between deployment and post-sale success. Success is measured by speed to production, deployment quality, customer confidence, platform adoption, retention, and expansion.

Key Responsibilities

Deployment execution and platform bring-up

• Lead end-to-end deployment of Armada platforms including Atlas, Galleon with AEP, and Leviathan AI Factory integrated with Bridge GPUaaS

• Execute deployments across the United States and Canada, including multi-site and hybrid environments

• Own infrastructure bring-up, platform configuration, and production readiness validation

• Make real-time technical decisions across hardware, networking, Kubernetes, storage, and GPU layers

• Partners with clients to integrate Galleon infrastructure into end-to-end solutions and existing IT ecosystems

• Conduct field surveys to facilitate frictionless Galleon deployments

Technical account ownership and customer success

• Serve as the primary technical point of contact (L1) for assigned North American customers post go-live

• Own the technical success plan, adoption milestones, and operational maturity roadmap

• Build trusted, long-term relationships with account executives, customer engineering, HW and SW engineering, Product team, ,as well as data & AI teams

• Lead technical governance discussions, roadmap planning, and platform optimization conversations and collaborates with AEs to deliver QBRs

• Acts as primary contact during escalations

Joint Success Plan ownership

• Build, maintain, and actively drive Joint Success Plans (JSPs) for each assigned customer

• Align deployment milestones, platform adoption, and operational maturity to customer business objectives

• Use the Joint Success Plan as the primary framework for prioritization, execution, risk management, and value tracking

• Regularly review progress against success plans with customer stakeholders and Armada leadership

• Ensure JSPs inform deployment sequencing, adoption strategy, roadmap discussions, and expansion planning

• Surface risks, dependencies, and blockers early and drive resolution with clear ownership

Time-to-value acceleration and adoption

• Reduce time-to-try and time-to-value by unblocking workloads and accelerating early production wins

• Drive platform adoption across new workloads, business units, and sites

• Identify expansion opportunities including additional Galleon deployments and Leviathan AI Factory capacity through Bridge GPUaaS

• Drive improved operational efficiency by integrating workloads into the Marketplace for easier deployment

Operational excellence and reliability

• Ensure customer environments remain stable, secure, and production-ready

• Proactively identify scaling risks, architectural gaps, and technical debt

• Coordinate with Product, Engineering, and Support teams to resolve issues efficiently

Data residency, security, and regulatory execution

• Operate confidently within US and Canadian data residency, privacy, and security expectations

• Support customer security reviews, audits, and governance processes

• Balance global delivery standards with regional regulatory and customer requirements

• Maintain disciplined access control, documentation, and operational hygiene

Field leadership and mentorship

• Act as a senior technical presence for North American customers, setting the bar for execution and customer engagement

• Mentor junior FDEs, TAMs, and delivery engineers as the region scales

• Contribute to deployment standards, runbooks, and repeatable best practices

Cross-functional collaboration

• Partner closely with the Sr. Director of Customer Success & Delivery, Americas on priorities and escalations

• Work with Sales on expansion planning while maintaining a trusted post-sale posture

• Provide structured feedback to Product and Engineering teams based on real customer usage

Qualifications and Experience

• 8+ years of experience in infrastructure, platform engineering, SRE, forward-deployed engineering, or technical account roles

• Proven ability to own both hands-on delivery and long-term customer technical relationships

• Deep technical expertise across Linux, networking, Kubernetes, storage, and GPU-accelerated compute

• Strong troubleshooting skills in live, production environments

• Experience supporting large enterprise or public sector customers in the US and Canada

• Willingness to travel across North America as required

• Clear, confident communication style suited for executive and senior engineering audiences

Preferred Experience

• Experience with edge compute, modular data centers, or distributed infrastructure

• Familiarity with AI workloads, GPU clusters, and high-performance computing environments

• Exposure to regulated industries such as energy, manufacturing, telecom, healthcare, or public sector

• Experience operating in geographically large or multi-region environments

• Comfort operating with ambiguity and owning outcomes end to end

What Success Looks Like

• North American customer environments reach production quickly and operate reliably

• The same engineer who deploys the platform remains the trusted technical owner long-term

• North American customer environments reach production quickly and operate reliably

• The same engineer who deploys the platform remains the trusted technical owner long-term

• Adoption expands across workloads, sites, and regions without handoff friction

• Customers view Armada as a strategic AI infrastructure partner due to consistent technical ownership

Compensation & Benefits

For U.S. Based candidates: To ensure fairness and transparency, the on-target earnings salary range for this role for candidates in the U.S. are listed, varying based on location experience, skills, and qualifications. In addition to the salary, this role will also be offered equity and subsidized benefits (details available upon request).

Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision (subsidized cost)

• Health savings accounts (HSA), flexible spending accounts (FSA), and dependent care FSAs (DCFSA)

• Retirement plan options, including 401(k) and Roth 401(k)

• Unlimited paid time off (PTO)

• 15 paid company holidays per year

#LI-Remote #HP-1

Compensation
$188,000—$235,000 USD

You're a Great Fit if You're

• A go-getter with a growth mindset. You're intellectually curious, have strong business acumen, and actively seek opportunities to build relevant skills and knowledge

• A detail-oriented problem-solver. You can independently gather information, solve problems efficiently, and deliver results with a "get-it-done" attitude

• Thrive in a fast-paced environment. You're energized by an entrepreneurial spirit, capable of working quickly, and excited to contribute to a growing company

• A collaborative team player. You focus on business success and are motivated by team accomplishment vs personal agenda

• Highly organized and results-driven. Strong prioritization skills and a dedicated work ethic are essential for you

Equal Opportunity Statement

At Armada, we are committed to fostering a work environment where everyone is given equal opportunities to thrive. As an equal opportunity employer, we strictly prohibit discrimination or harassment based on race, color, gender, religion, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, genetic information, pregnancy, or any other characteristic protected by law. This policy applies to all employment decisions, including hiring, promotions, and compensation. Our hiring is guided by qualifications, merit, and the business needs at the time.

Unsolicited Resumes and Candidates

Armada does not accept unsolicited resumes or candidate submissions from external agencies or recruiters. All candidates must apply directly through our careers page. Any resumes submitted by agencies without a prior signed agreement will be considered unsolicited and Armada will not be obligated to pay any fees.