Forward Deployed Engineer - Director

Description

The role is a senior technical leadership position building AI-powered solutions for the company Payment Express, combining applied AI, modern software engineering and close work with clients.

You will drive the build-out and delivery of CPX across multiple markets and work directly with stakeholders to deliver measurable business value.

You will lead cross-functional work across platform engineering, security, full-stack development and AI tooling, keeping every solution production-grade, scalable and aligned with enterprise standards.

You will mentor a high-performing engineering team and stay involved in architecture, code and delivery.

The work shapes how the company uses AI to serve clients, streamline operations and stay competitive in a fast-changing market.

Responsibilities

• Own the technical strategy, architecture and delivery roadmap for CPX in key markets.
• Lead the CPX market rollouts for Payments.
• Get solutions into production quickly and reliably.
• Keep engineering work tied to business goals and client needs.
• Work directly with clients, stakeholders and end users to understand their workflows and problems.
• Find high-value places where AI and engineering can make a measurable difference.
• Take solutions end to end, from concept to production.
• Lead, mentor and develop engineers.
• Build a culture of technical excellence, innovation and accountability.
• Balance leadership work with hands-on technical contribution.
• Design and build agents using Google Agent Development Kit (ADK) and Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers.
• Build scalable APIs and backend services in Python and Java, and contribute across the full software development lifecycle.
• Deploy, run and maintain services on Kubernetes and AWS, applying strong networking and cloud-native architecture principles.
• Improve reliability, scalability and operations of the platform.
• Champion AI product development lifecycle (PDLC) practices.
• Use DORA metrics and other engineering KPIs to keep improving delivery.
• Lead migration and integration work across strategic internal platforms, including ARC and AgentFlow.
• Keep this work aligned with organizational standards and technology strategy.
• Partner with senior leaders across Services and Technology.
• Report on delivery progress, risks and strategic recommendations, and align technical work with business priorities.

Requirements

• 15+ years as a senior engineering leader, engineering manager or technical architect, with a record of building, leading and scaling high-performing teams.
• Proven ability to lead, coach and mentor engineers at all levels, supporting their growth, career development and succession planning.
• Experience building engineering culture, defining team values and driving accountability, innovation and technical excellence across an organization.
• Strong leadership in PDLC best practices, CI/CD pipelines, automated testing and engineering metrics, including DORA (Deployment Frequency, Lead Time, Change Failure Rate, MTTR).
• Experience in customer-facing, consulting, embedded or forward deployed engineering settings, turning business problems into technical solutions.
• Good hands-on experience building agentic AI solutions with Google Agent Development Kit (ADK) and Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers, including integrating AI into production workflows.
• Expert-level Python and Java, with strong skills in API design, microservices and distributed systems.
• Extensive hands-on experience architecting, deploying and operating Kubernetes services, including pod management, service mesh, ingress controllers, cluster autoscaling and multi-cluster orchestration.
• Hands-on experience with containerization, including Docker, multi-stage builds and container registries.
• Experience architecting cloud-native solutions on AWS (EKS, Lambda, S3, RDS, DynamoDB) and modern deployment methods.
• Experience with event-driven architectures and message brokers such as Apache Kafka, RabbitMQ, AWS SNS/SQS or Google Pub/Sub, designing for fault tolerance and scale.
• Strong understanding of NoSQL databases such as MongoDB.
• Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience. A master's degree is preferred.

Conditions

Full-time role based in Jersey City, New Jersey, United States.

Primary salary range is $170,000.00 to $300,000.00.

Anticipated posting close date is Oct 23, 2026.

Equal-opportunity statement and Know Your Rights information are available from the company.

Benefits

• Eligible employees may receive discretionary and formulaic incentive and retention awards.
• Medical, dental and vision coverage, 401(k), life, accident and disability insurance, and wellness programs.
• Paid vacation, sick leave and paid holidays.
• Further benefit details are on citibenefits.com, and offerings vary by jurisdiction, job level and hire date.