Forward Deploy Engineer

About the Company Armada is the hyperscaler for the edge, delivering modular AI infrastructure from first deployment to AI factory with speed, scale and sovereignty. Named one of Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies and to the CNBC Disruptor 50, Armada’s solutions are deployed in over 60 countries globally for organizations ranging from energy to defense.  With nearly half a billion dollars in funding, Armada is backed by top investors such as Microsoft (M12), Founders Fund, and BlackRock, and has collaborations and partnerships including NVIDIA, Palantir and Dell Technologies. We are looking for the most brilliant minds in the world to join us.  Working at Armada means taking ownership, driving autonomy, and delivering impact. You’ll tackle challenges that haven’t been solved before and help build something transformative from the ground up. What you do here will not only define your career but help further Armada’s mission to bridge the digital divide for customers around the world.   About Armada Armada delivers sovereign, industrial-grade AI infrastructure designed to operate where traditional cloud and centralized data center models fall short. Our platform includes Atlas as the control plane, Galleon modular edge data centers powered by the Armada Edge Platform, and Leviathan, Armada’s AI Factory, which partners with Bridge, our GPU-as-a-Service offering. Together, these capabilities enable enterprises and governments to deploy, operate, and scale AI workloads securely, efficiently, and close to where data is generated. Saudi Arabia is Armada’s operational anchor for the ME region. As we scale, we are intentionally building a team of senior, versatile operators who can both get systems live and own customers long-term. This role is designed for engineers who want full lifecycle ownership, not narrow scope. Role Overview The Senior Forward Deploy Engineer is a hybrid role responsible for hands-on deployment execution and ongoing technical account ownership for Armada customers across ME. This role combines the intensity and depth of a Forward Deploy Engineer with the long-term customer ownership of a Technical Account Manager. In the early phases of customer engagement, this role leads deployments, platform bring-up, and initial workload execution. Once customers are live, the same engineer remains the primary technical owner, driving adoption, operational maturity, and expansion. This role reports into the Sr. Director of Customer Success & Delivery, EMEA & ANZ and is intentionally designed to avoid split ownership between deployment and post-sale success. Success is measured by speed to production, customer confidence, platform adoption, retention, and expansion. Key Responsibilities Deployment execution and platform bring-up Lead end-to-end deployment of Armada platforms including Atlas, Galleon with AEP, and Leviathan AI Factory integrated with Bridge GPU-as-a-Service Own on-site and in-country deployments across Saudi Arabia and the broader ME region Own infrastructure bring-up, platform configuration, and production readiness validation Make real-time technical decisions across hardware, networking, Kubernetes, storage, and GPU layers Technical account ownership and customer success Serve as the primary technical point of contact for assigned customers post go-live Own the technical success plan, adoption milestones, and operational maturity roadmap Build trusted, long-term relationships with customer engineering, IT, OT, and security team Lead technical governance discussions, roadmap planning, and platform optimization conversations Joint Success Plan ownership Build, maintain, and actively drive Joint Success Plans (JSPs) for each assigned customer Align deployment milestones, platform adoption, and operational maturity to customer business objectives Use the Joint Success Plan as the primary framework for prioritization, execution, risk management, and value tracking Regularly review progress against success plans with customer stakeholders and Armada leadership Ensure JSPs inform deployment sequencing, adoption strategy, roadmap discussions, and expansion planning Surface risks, dependencies, and blockers early and drive resolution with clear ownership Time-to-value acceleration and adoption Reduce time-to-try and time-to-value by unblocking workloads and accelerating early production use cases Drive adoption across new workloads, business units, and countries Identify expansion opportunities including additional Galleon deployments and Leviathan AI Factory capacity through Bridge GPUaaS Operational excellence and reliability Ensure customer environments remain stable, secure, and production-ready Proactively identify scaling risks, architectural gaps, and technical debt Coordinate with Product, Engineering, and Support teams to resolve issues efficiently Sovereign data, security, and compliance execution Operate confidently within Saudi and regional sovereign data and security requirements Support security validation, audits, and governance processes as required by customers Maintain disciplined access control, documentation, and operational hygiene Field leadership and mentorship Act as a senior technical presence for ND8 customers, setting the bar for execution and professionalism Mentor junior FDEs, TAMs, and delivery engineers as the region scales Contribute to deployment standards, runbooks, and repeatable best practices Cross-functional collaboration Partner closely with the Sr. Director of Customer Success & Delivery, EMEA & ANZ on customer priorities and escalations Work with Sales on expansion planning while maintaining a trusted post-sale posture Provide structured feedback to Product and Engineering based on real customer usage Qualifications and Experience 8+ years of experience in infrastructure, platform engineering, SRE, forward-deployed eng