Manager, Forward Deployed Engineering

Req ID: CSQ427R97 Location: Tokyo, Japan

Mission

We are FDEs! The Forward Deployed Engineering team is a highly specialized, customer-facing unit within Databricks. We work with strategic customers to design, build, and productionize high-impact data and AI solutions on the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform.

As Manager, Forward Deployed Engineering, you will lead and grow a team of customer-facing engineers focused on solving complex data engineering and AI challenges for some of our most strategic customers. You will help shape delivery strategy, develop senior technical talent, build trusted executive relationships, and ensure our teams deliver measurable customer outcomes at high quality and scale. This is a hands-on leadership role: you will manage and grow the team while remaining the senior technical authority they escalate to.

This role is ideal for a leader who combines strong people management with deep technical credibility in data engineering, platform architecture, and large-scale production delivery.

The impact you will have

• Lead, hire, mentor, and grow a team of ~10 high-performing Forward Deployed Engineers, building a strong culture of technical excellence, customer obsession, and execution

• Partner with customers and internal stakeholders to shape complex engagements that deliver meaningful business outcomes on Databricks

• Guide teams through end-to-end solution delivery, from discovery and architecture through implementation, deployment, and enablement

• Build trusted relationships with technical and executive stakeholders, acting as a senior advisor during strategic customer engagements

• Serve as the senior technical escalation point for the team. Stay hands-on enough to dive into architecture reviews, unblock complex delivery issues, and make high-stakes technical calls alongside your engineers on the most strategic accounts.

• Coach engineers on solution design, stakeholder management, delivery quality, and long-term career development

• Partner closely with Sales, Field Engineering, Product, and Professional Services leadership to align on account strategy, staffing, and execution

• Improve repeatability and scale by developing reusable patterns, delivery best practices, technical assets, and team processes

• Help the organization grow its presence in data engineering-led transformations, including modern data platforms, pipelines, governance, and production workloads

What we look for

• Experience leading, hiring, and developing high-performing technical teams in customer-facing environments

• Current, hands-on technical credibility. Able to personally review designs, debug production issues, and act as the final technical escalation point rather than manage from above.

• Strong background in data engineering, big data systems, and production data platform delivery

• Experience across modern data workloads such as ingestion, transformation, orchestration, warehousing, analytics/BI, or streaming in enterprise environments

• Strong hands-on fluency in Python and SQL; familiarity with distributed processing frameworks (Apache Spark) and JVM languages (Scala/Java) is a plus

• Passion for reinventing delivery through AI. Continuously experiments with and operationalizes the latest AI coding tools (e.g., Genie, Claude Code, Codex) to improve productivity, quality, and repeatability across the team

• Ability to scope and guide complex technical engagements, manage escalations, and ensure successful delivery across multiple stakeholders

• Strong executive communication skills, with the ability to translate technical decisions into business impact, or vice versa

• Comfort operating in ambiguous environments and leading teams through fast-moving, high-visibility