About the role
Forward Deployed Engineering Manager Forward Deployed Engineering Manager Advanced Navigation is the world’s most determined innovator in AI robotics and navigation technologies across land, air, sea and space applications. Founded on a culture of research and discovery, Advanced Navigation's mission is to be the catalyst of the autonomy revolution. Fields of expertise include artificial intelligence, underwater sonar, GNSS, radio frequency systems, inertial sensors, robotics, quantum sensors and photonics. Today, Advanced Navigation is a supplier to some of the world's largest companies, including Airbus, Boeing, Google, Tesla, NASA, Apple, and General Motors. Discover it for yourself: https://youtu.be/F7uAqs1gtuk
About
the role Forward Deployed Engineering exists to close the gap between world-class sensor technology and mission success in the field. As Forward Deployed Engineering Manager, you will build and lead a global team of engineers who embed directly with customers — on vehicles, on vessels, on ranges and in integration labs — to design, integrate, validate and ship navigation solutions into complex defence and commercial platforms. This is a player-coach leadership role for a deeply technical operator. You will co-own the technical dimension of the customer journey from qualification through to fielded capability, and you will be accountable for the commercial outcomes that flow from it: win rate, time-to-integration and product-customer fit.
The role is a core pillar of the Growth organisation, reporting directly to the Chief Growth Officer. You will lead the organisational machinery — processes, tools, and playbooks — that enable our regional GTM teams to succeed. You will work in close partnership with regional leaders (Americas, EMEA, APAC) to ensure FDE activity is forecastable and directed at the priorities which drive growth for their business. Roles &
Responsibilities Strategic Leadership & GTM Alignment: Define and optimise the FDE charter to support the global operating model, ensuring technical resources are prioritised based on commercial impact and XL deal capture. Recruit, develop and retain engineers who combine deep technical capability (INS, GNSS, sensor fusion, robotics) with customer-facing excellence Establish deployment playbooks: pre-sale technical qualification, on-site integration sprints, acceptance testing and handover to sustainment Post-sale and support operations : replace pre-sale qualification and integration sprints with a Tier 1–3 technical support hierarchy, SLA management, ticketing, and RMA/hardware repair workflows Lead in challenging environments: act as a point of escalation for internal queries as well as customer issues. Responsibly hire new technical talent, developing the technical capability of the global FDE organisation, working to ensure the FDE team is highly engaged Support and align across regions: Lead globally while acting as the functional counterpart to the Americas and EMEA Applications/FDE leads, sharing playbooks, tooling and benchmarking practice Provide surge support on major pursuits in other regions where APAC expertise (or product-line depth) is decisive Lead a cross-region FDE community of practice so customers experience one consistent standard worldwide Where feasible, operate effectively in a matrix: the regions own their own P&L and their own teams, so influence is earned through demonstrably useful standards, tooling and support rather than exercised through reporting lines Where aligned with key growth priorities, manage cross-region surge support as requested, prioritised, resourced and cost-recovered Own technical wins: Contribute to the technical strategy on strategic pursuits and key accounts Drive win rate through superior technical positioning: demonstrations, trials, benchmarking campaigns and integration proofs-of-concept Act as the senior technical escalation point for the highest-stakes customer implementations and queries Close the product feedback loop: Translate field-derived insight into structured product
