Forward Deployed Engineer

There's a simple test for a Senior Technical PM / Forward Deployed Engineer: are engineers bringing them their hard problems, or routing around them?

Routing happens when a PM can't hold technical context in the room. Every question gets relayed. Every tradeoff has to be explained twice. The PM becomes overhead. Good engineers navigate around overhead.

This role is for the person engineers bring the hard problems to — the one who already has a read on the architecture question before it's asked, and is accountable for what ships because of it.

AI changes the leverage equation. A Senior Technical PM who deploys AI tooling aggressively — for research, for prototyping, for analysis — operates with a force multiplier that eliminates the traditional "PM as bottleneck" problem.

Own Strategy at the System Level

• Define product strategy that accounts for technical constraints and unlocks — not one that ignores the stack or hides behind abstraction.
• Translate business objectives into technical product bets that engineering teams can execute with confidence.
• Drive discovery at the API, data-model, and architecture level — understand what's achievable before writing a requirements doc.
• Own metrics and instrument what matters. Drive decisions from data and system telemetry, not assumption.

Be in the Room

• Engage at the level of system design: read specs, evaluate tradeoffs, push back on decisions that create debt or constrain future options.
• Write PRDs that engineers don't need to translate — precise, unambiguous, grounded in technical reality. Better yet: hand them a blueprint built from live prototype sessions with real users, not from assumption.
• Vibe-code working prototypes and deploy them to real users, SMEs, and domain experts before production engineering touches the problem — run live lab tests, not focus groups, and harvest the behavioral dataset that turns engineering into blueprint execution, not exploration.
• Decompose complex systems into shippable increments without losing the user story thread.
• Eliminate the friction that blocks great engineering work. Protect team focus — and protect it by arriving with answers, not questions.

Deploy AI as Force Multiplier

• Build and maintain a personal AI toolkit for research synthesis, discovery automation, spec writing, and rapid iteration.
• Vibe-code working prototypes using AI coding environments — not wireframes, not mockups, functional products — and deploy them to end users, SMEs, and domain experts. Run live lab tests, collect comprehensive behavioral data, and harvest edge-case signal before production engineering starts. The output isn't a validated spec; it's a dataset. Production builds from it at speed, with zero ambiguity and minimal post-ship rework.
• Use AI agents to accelerate every phase: user research, competitive analysis, data analysis, documentation.
• Drive AI integration where it removes real friction — not where it just adds a chatbot to something that didn't need one.
• Set the standard for AI-augmented PM practice on the team.

Drive Outcomes Through Influence

• Align stakeholders through demonstrated insight and momentum — not status reports.
• Build the case for the right technical investments at the executive level, grounded in business outcomes.
• Navigate cross-functional complexity — eng, design, data, infra, security — without creating coordination overhead.
• Know when to move fast and when to slow down to get alignment right.

Systems Fluency — Reads distributed systems, APIs, data models, and infrastructure with enough depth to evaluate tradeoffs rather than relay them. Knows what a bad technical decision looks like before it ships.

Strategic Clarity — Translates ambiguous technical opportunity into prioritized product bets. Connects system-level decisions to revenue, cost, and user impact with precision.

Technical Communication — Writes and speaks with precision across altitudes: executive narrative, engineering spec, user story. Doesn't hide behind vague requirements or impenetrable jargon. Doesn't waste engineers' time.

AI-Native Practice — Treats AI tooling as essential infrastructure for the PM workflow. Continuously builds and refines a personal AI stack. Uses agents and automation to compress feedback loops.

Cross-Functional Influence — Drives outcomes through credibility and clarity. Engineers trust this PM's technical instincts. Executives trust their strategic judgment. Design partners are elevated, not overruled.

High Agency Bias — Doesn't wait for perfect information or organizational permission. Generates momentum. Has a strong point of view, acts on it, and earns the trust to keep doing it.

Not a project manager. Not a roadmap admin. Not a translation layer between users and engineers. If your definition of PM output is a well-groomed backlog, this isn't your role.

The best Senior Technical PMs make their engineering team faster just by being in the room. The work is knowing when to go deep and when to get out of the way.

• 7+ years building technical products — APIs, platforms, data products, infrastructure-adjacent experiences — with a track record of shipping things that changed behavior.
• Background that includes engineering, data engineering, or systems design — enough to have made real technical tradeoffs under pressure.
• Genuine fluency with AI tooling: LLMs, agent frameworks, AI-assisted development and research environments.
• Experience partnering with platform, infrastructure, or data engineering teams. Comfort with systems that don't have a clean UI.
• Operated with high autonomy in ambiguous environments — takes initiative before being asked, closes loops without prompting.
• Communicates with precision. Doesn't need a slide deck to make a point.

In Your First 30 Days

• You've mapped how internal engineering teams use — and work around — the platform. Who's on it, who's not, and why.
• You're deep enough in the ODA and compute stack to have a credible opinion about where the friction lives.
• You've identified the one or two platform gaps creating the most downstream pain across teams.

In Your First 60 Days

• You own a clear platform product bet — whether that's developer experience on ODA, making compute costs legible to teams, or shipping a self-service capability that reduces dependency on the Platform eng team.
• At least one engineering team is your active customer — their feedback is your signal, their unblocking is your metric.
• Platform engineers see you as someone who makes their priorities clearer and their work faster.

In Your First 90 Days

• You've shipped a platform improvement another engineering team actually noticed — reduced friction, better tooling, clearer instrumentation.
• You've established a feedback loop between Platform and the teams building on top of it. The kind that didn't exist before.
• You're already seeing where the next constraint lives before being asked.

• Work from anywhere in the US! Machinify is digital-first.
• Top Medical/Dental/Vision offerings
• FSA/HSA
• Tuition reimbursement
• Competitive salary, 401(k) with company match
• Unlimited PTO
• Additional health and wellness benefits and perks
• Flexible and trusting environment where you’ll feel empowered to do your best work 

The salary for this position is based on an array of factors unique to each candidate: Such as years and depth of experience, set skills, certifications, etc. We are hiring for different levels, and our Recruiting team will let you know if you qualify for a different role/range. Salary is one component of the total compensation package, which includes meaningful equity, excellent healthcare, flexible time off, and other benefits and perks.