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The Lead Forward Deployed Engineer (Lead FDE) is a senior, customer-facing leader who owns the outcome thread across complex and strategic customer engagements. Working directly with executive, business, and technical stakeholders, the Lead FDE turns ambiguous priorities into measurable outcomes, establishes the path from opportunity to production value, and ensures the right combination of Forward Deployed, product, engineering, transformation, and platform capabilities are brought together around the customer need.
The Lead FDE combines deep expertise in a relevant specialist discipline with broad understanding of enterprise AI, technology platforms, industry context, commercial models, and company and partner capabilities. They apply judgement across domain, technology, client relationships, and outcome leadership to shape high-impact opportunities, determine the most appropriate delivery route, and guide customers through material investment and delivery decisions.
The Lead FDE provides continuity across the customer lifecycle, from discovery and validation through production delivery, adoption, value measurement, and continuous improvement. They orchestrate specialist FDEs and scalable delivery teams, maintain alignment between customer outcomes and technical execution, and intervene where assumptions, priorities, risks, or delivery decisions threaten the intended value. The Lead FDE does not replace accountable customer ownership, delivery leadership, or managed service responsibilities.
Combining executive-level client emotional intelligence, strong domain and technical credibility, commercial judgement, and outcome leadership, the Lead FDE operates independently in high-ambiguity enterprise environments. They lead complex multi-domain engagements, develop trusted senior relationships, mentor and assure other FDEs, contribute to strategic pursuits, and convert field learning into reusable assets, improved methods, and stronger company capabilities.
What you'll be doing:
- Partner with executive, business, and technical stakeholders to define strategic objectives, priority workflows, measurable outcomes, and the decisions required to achieve them.
- Lead complex discovery, assessment, and solution-shaping engagements, turning ambiguous customer priorities into a coherent portfolio of validated opportunities and delivery decisions.
- Establish and maintain the outcome framework across engagements, including business ownership, baselines, target measures, assumptions, dependencies, and evidence required for progression.
- Direct rapid prototyping, proof points, experiments, and demonstrations, ensuring technical effort is focused on the assumptions most critical to customer value, adoption, and feasibility.
- Provide senior technical and solution judgement across AI, data, integration, architecture, security, privacy, Responsible AI, operational readiness, infrastructure, cost, and scalability.
- Shape strategic opportunities into production-ready work, ensuring architecture direction, backlog, dependencies, acceptance criteria, estimates, governance, and mobilisation are sufficiently mature for scalable delivery.
- Build trusted relationships with executive, business, and technical stakeholders, acting as a senior advisor who can simplify complexity, challenge constructively, and guide material customer decisions.
- Orchestrate specialist Forward Deployed practitioners and teams across industry, transformation, AI Studio, product, AI Factory, architecture, engineering, delivery, and operations around a single customer outcome.
- Lead resolution of complex business, technical, operational, and organisational challenges using sound judgement, structured problem-solving, evidence, and appropriate escalation.
- Identify, qualify, and prioritise high-value opportunities by combining domain context, customer strategy, technology capability, feasibility, adoption requirements, and measurable business impact.
- Determine and recommend the most appropriate delivery route, including AI Studio, company products, AI Factory, transformation services, partner capabilities, reuse, further validation, or stop.
- Maintain executive-level outcome stewardship as work moves into delivery and operation, validating major decisions, changes in assumptions, adoption signals, realised value, and the need to optimise, scale, redirect, or stop.
- Provide engagement-level assurance for Forward Deployed work, reviewing quality, customer readiness, production shaping, reuse, and transition into scalable delivery models.
- Capture field intelligence, customer signals, product feedback, implementation learning, reusable patterns, and recurring constraints, and translate them into improvements to products, platforms, offers, standards, and delivery methods.
- Develop FDE capability through mentoring, coaching, peer review, Candidate residency, accreditation input, knowledge sharing, and creation of reusable playbooks and assets.
- Role may require working at customer sites, company offices, or hybrid delivery locations depending on engagement needs.
What experience you'll bring:
- Typically 10+ years of relevant experience in AI or software engineering, solution architecture, consulting, customer engineering, product, industry transformation, technology delivery, or related disciplines, including substantial senior customer-facing responsibility.
- Proven experience leading complex enterprise engagements and building trusted relationships with executive, business, technical, and operational stakeholders.
- Demonstrated success as a senior Forward Deployed practitioner, customer engineering leader, solution leader, or equivalent across multiple complex engagements.
- Experience leading ambiguous opportunities from discovery and problem framing through evidence, investment decisions, production shaping, adoption, and measurable impact.
- Experience directing prototypes, proof points, experiments, and solution validation while focusing effort on the assumptions most critical to value and feasibility.
- Experience shaping and assuring enterprise solutions involving architecture, AI, data, integration, security, governance, infrastructure, deployment, and production constraints.
- Experience applying industry, business, or functional context to customer workflows, operating models, KPIs, value drivers, and transformation decisions.
- Experience connecting technical and delivery decisions to customer outcomes, adoption, value realisation, commercial considerations, and scalability.
- Experience orchestrating multidisciplinary teams across product, engineering, platform, industry, transformation, architecture, delivery, operations, and account functions.
- Experience evaluating build, buy, reuse, product, partner, platform, and infrastructure options without defaulting to a single solution path.
- Experience operating independently with senior stakeholders, exercising sound commercial and technical judgement, resolving conflict, and maintaining momentum through ambiguity.
- Experience creating or scaling reusable patterns, reference architectures, playbooks, methodologies, accelerators, product improvements, or other assets from field engagements.
- Demonstrated experience mentoring FDEs or FDE Candidates, providing peer assurance, and contributing to capability standards, accreditation, or communities of practice.
Who we are:
At NTT DATA, you have endless opportunities to think big, act bold and take ownership. As a $30+ billion business and technology services, AI and digital infrastructure leader, we co-innovate solutions with clients and partners globally for business and societal impact. Serving 75% of the Fortune Global 100, with experts in over 70 countries, we encourage experimentation and recognize great work. Proudly a Global Top Employer, NTT DATA is part of NTT Group, which invests over $3 billion annually in R&D. Make this the place where you belong, learn, and build your network. Make this the place where you grow.
what we'll offer you:
We offer a range of tailored benefits that support your physical, emotional, and financial wellbeing. Our Learning and Development team ensure that there are continuous growth and development opportunities for our people. We also offer the opportunity to have flexible work options.
You can find more information about NTT DATA UK & Ireland here: https://uk.nttdata.com/
We are an equal opportunities employer. We believe in the fair treatment of all our employees and commit to promoting equity and diversity in our employment practices. We are also a proud Disability Confident Committed Employer - we are committed to creating a diverse and inclusive workforce. We actively collaborate with individuals who have disabilities and long-term health conditions which have an effect on their ability to do normal daily activities, ensuring that barriers are eliminated when it comes to employment opportunities. In line with our commitment, we guarantee an interview to applicants who declare to us, during the application process, that they have a disability and meet the minimum requirements for the role. If you require any reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process, please let us know. Join us in building a truly diverse and empowered team.
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“Upon joining the NTT DATA UK family, you will experience a culturally diverse organisation living our values of Clients First, Teamwork and Foresight as we partner with our customers every day.
At NTT DATA UK, we are proud to support and invest in our people. We offer a variety of rewarding career paths and opportunities to develop professionally - with access to cutting edge innovation.”
Niccolo Spataro, CEO, NTT DATA UK
