About the RoleID.me is looking for a Manager of Forward Deployed Engineering to sit within Product Operations and act as the connective tissue between our customers, our product team, and engineering. This role owns a small team of forward-deployed engineers who embed directly with customers, diagnose real-world integration challenges, and translate what they learn into clear, structured input the product ontology and engineering teams can act on. You'll be equally comfortable in a customer war room and in a backlog-grooming session - someone who can build trust with a customer's technical stakeholders one hour and prioritize your team's next two sprints the next.
What You'll DoCustomer problem communication- Serve as the primary translator between customers and ID.me's product ontology and engineering teams - turning ambiguous, in-the-field customer problems into precise technical requirements, data model implications, and well-scoped engineering asks.
- Document and route customer-reported issues, edge cases, and feature gaps so product ontology and engineering have the context they need without having to talk to the customer directly.
- Build repeatable processes (templates, intake forms, escalation paths) that keep customer problems from getting lost or garbled between teams.
Team leadership and prioritization- Manage and grow a team of forward deployed engineers, setting clear goals and providing technical and career mentorship.
- Build, maintain, and prioritize the team's backlog of customer-driven work, balancing urgent customer needs against long-term platform and ontology investments.
- Partner with Product Operations and Engineering leadership to align FDE work with broader roadmap and capacity planning.
- Establish metrics to track team throughput, customer impact, and time-to-resolution, and use them to continuously improve how the team operates.
Customer relationships- Build durable, trusted relationships with customer technical and business stakeholders, acting as a face of ID.me during implementation, expansion, and escalation moments.
- Travel on-site or join deep working sessions with customers as needed to understand their environment firsthand.
- Represent the voice of the customer internally, and represent ID.me's technical roadmap and constraints externally, in a way that keeps both sides aligned.
What You'll Bring- 5+ years in a customer-facing engineering role (forward deployed engineering, solutions engineering, sales engineering, or implementation engineering), with 2+ years managing engineers.
- Track record of translating messy, real-world customer problems into clear technical specs that engineering and data/ontology teams can execute against.
- Experience building and prioritizing a backlog for a small team under competing customer deadlines.
- Strong technical fluency - comfortable reading API docs, discussing data models, and troubleshooting integrations alongside engineers, without needing to write production code day-to-day.
- Excellent relationship-building skills with both technical and non-technical customer stakeholders, including at the executive level.
- Clear, structured written and verbal communication; comfortable being the bridge in a room full of people who don't naturally speak the same language.
Nice to Have- Background in identity proofing, fraud, or data/knowledge graph and ontology systems.
- Prior experience at a high-growth B2B SaaS or platform company.
The annual base salary listed does not include a company bonus, incentive for sales roles, equity and benefits which will be determined based on experience, skills, education, relevant training, geographic location and role.
ID.me offers comprehensive medical, dental, vision, health savings account, flexible spending accounts (medical, limited purpose, dependent care, commuter benefit accounts), basic and voluntary life and AD&D insurance, 401(k) with company match, parental leave, ability to participate in unlimited paid time off subject to the terms and conditions of the PTO policy, including 8 company wide holidays, short and long-term disability insurance, accident and critical illness insurance, referral bonus policy, employee assistance program, pet insurance, travel assistant program, wellbeing and childcare discounts, benefit advocates, and a learning and development benefit.
Final offers may vary from the amount listed based on qualifications, professional experiences, skills, education, relevant training, geographic location, and other job related factors.
Mountain View, CA Pay Range
$188,000-$275,000 USD
