Director, Forward Deployed Engineer

BNY Mellon

$147K — $260K *
Enterprise Technology
11 - 15 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • Bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering, or related field; advanced degree is beneficial.
  • 14+ years of software development and technical leadership experience, especially in production systems.
  • Strong understanding of AI and agent-based application patterns, such as RAG and semantic search.
  • Hands-on experience in backend services, APIs, and production systems.
  • Experience across architecture, data, and platforms, beyond just a single area.

Responsibilities

  • Lead a portfolio of forward deployment engagements, ensuring value delivery within set timelines.
  • Serve as the senior technical voice for executive stakeholders to translate opportunities into actionable plans.
  • Own and evolve the forward deployment playbook, establishing operation standards and criteria.
  • Drive a reuse-first culture, converting field learnings into firm-wide architectures.
  • Set quality and governance standards, ensuring practices are consistently applied across engagements.
  • Define a model for engaging that ensures clear ownership and capability transfer at project completion.
  • Represent the FDE function to senior leadership, shaping firm-wide strategies based on practical delivery insights.

Benefits

  • Access to flexible global resources and tools for personal growth.
  • Focus on health and well-being with comprehensive support programs.
  • Generous paid leaves, including volunteer time.
  • Support for financial goals as a valued team member.
Full Job Description
Job Description

We're seeking a future team member for the role of Senior Forward Deployed Engineer to join our Engineering Hub Team. This role is located in New York City.

In this role, you'll make an impact in the following ways:
  • Lead a portfolio of FDE engagements across business and platform domains; set priorities, allocate engineering capacity, and ensure engagements are scoped to deliver measurable value within time-boxed windows.
  • Serve as the senior technical voice in discovery with executive sponsors and business leaders; translate ambiguous, high-stakes opportunities into feasible, production-ready delivery plans.
  • Own and evolve the FDE playbook: define discovery-to-production standards, engagement entry and exit criteria, handoff protocols, and working norms that govern how the team operates.
  • Drive the reuse-first mandate across the FDE team: establish patterns for when to build, extend, or standardize; ensure field learnings are converted into firm-wide reference architectures and platform contributions.
  • Set quality and governance standards for the FDE function: secure-by-default practices, observability, testability, and operational readiness expectations applied consistently across all engagements.
  • Define the institutionalization model for forward deployment: ensure every engagement ends with a clear handoff, documented ownership, and a capable owning team - not a dependency on FDE.
  • Represent the FDE function to architecture, control, security, compliance, and senior technology leadership; shape firm-wide AI and platform strategy based on production delivery evidence.
  • Identify capability gaps and platform investment opportunities surfaced through FDE field work; translate these into actionable recommendations for platform and engineering leadership.
  • Build and grow the FDE team: recruit, develop, and retain senior engineers; set a high technical bar and a culture of disciplined, evidence-backed delivery.
  • Stay at the frontier of AI, platform engineering, and regulated delivery practices; bring that knowledge back into the function and the broader technology organization.

To be successful in this role, we're seeking the following:

Basic Qualifications
  • Bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering, or a related discipline, or equivalent work experience required; advanced degree is beneficial.
  • 14+ years of software development and technical leadership experience, including direct accountability for production systems and cross-functional delivery programs; experience in the securities or financial services industry is a plus.
  • Strong foundational understanding of modern AI and agentic application patterns, including retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), semantic search, and agent-based system design.
  • Hands-on experience building backend services, APIs, and production systems.
  • Experience working across architecture, data, and platform concerns rather than only within a narrow layer.

Preferred Qualifications
  • Track record of building or scaling a delivery capability (e.g., solutions engineering, forward deployment, platform engineering) within a large enterprise or regulated environment.
  • Demonstrated experience delivering AI, data, or workflow-heavy solutions at scale in regulated environments, with accountability for production outcomes.
  • Strong systems-thinking and architecture judgment across services, data, and infrastructure; able to evaluate and influence technology choices at a divisional level.
  • Experience defining and operating delivery standards, playbooks, or center-of-excellence functions.
  • Experience balancing speed with governance, security, and operational rigor across a team or portfolio.
  • Deep familiarity with reusable platform patterns, internal developer platforms, and productized infrastructure.

Technical Skills
  • Strong software engineering skills in one or more of: Java, TypeScript/JavaScript, Python.
  • Experience with APIs, service integration, and secure-by-default engineering practices.
  • Ability to work across data, AI, workflow, and platform layers as needed.
  • Comfort using modern AI tooling pragmatically without confusing prototypes for production systems.
  • Familiarity with application frameworks and containerization.

Non-Technical Skills
  • Exceptional written and verbal communication; able to advise and influence senior business and technology executives.
  • Strong strategic and product judgment: knows which opportunities are worth pursuing and which are not.
  • Proven ability to lead across matrixed organizations and build alignment without formal authority.
  • Structured tradeoff thinking at portfolio scale, balancing risk, speed, and long-term platform health.
  • Bias toward action with disciplined follow-through and strong artifact discipline.

People Leadership
  • Leads, grows, and retains a team of senior engineers; sets technical standards and delivery culture for the FDE function.
  • Develops talent pipelines and mentors engineers toward greater technical and delivery autonomy.
  • Influences technology implementation and forward-deployed delivery standards across large IT divisions.


Our Benefits and Rewards:

BNY offers highly competitive compensation, benefits, and wellbeing programs rooted in a strong culture of excellence and our pay-for-performance philosophy. We provide access to flexible global resources and tools for your life's journey. Focus on your health, foster your personal resilience, and reach your financial goals as a valued member of our team, along with generous paid leaves, including paid volunteer time, that can support you and your family through moments that matter.

BNY assesses market data to ensure a competitive compensation package for our employees. The base salary for this position is expected to be between $147,000 and $260,000 per year at the commencement of employment. However, base salary if hired will be determined on an individualized basis, including as to experience and market location, and is only part of the BNY total compensation package, which, depending on the position, may also include commission earnings, discretionary bonuses, short and long-term incentive packages, and Company-sponsored benefit programs.
This position is at-will and the Company reserves the right to modify base salary (as well as any other discretionary payment or compensation) at any time, including for reasons related to individual performance, change in geographic location, Company or individual department/team performance, and market factors.

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