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Forward Deployed Team Lead (Chicago)

Open 24d posting dated 2 weeks ago

Summary

Leads end-to-end deployment of enterprise AI applications for customers, designing architectures, coding solutions, and driving production rollouts while managing technical and business stakeholders.

C3 AI (NYSE: AI), is the Enterprise AI application software company. C3 AI delivers a family of fully integrated products including the C3 Agentic AI Platform, an end-to-end platform for developing, deploying, and operating enterprise AI applications, C3 AI applications, a portfolio of industry-specific SaaS enterprise AI applications that enable the digital transformation of organizations globally, and C3 Generative AI, a suite of domain-specific generative AI offerings for the enterprise. Learn more at: C3 AI

Forward Deployed Team Leads are senior technical leads who own a commercial or enterprise customer end-to-end. You’ll combine strong technical architecture, hands-on coding, product ownership, project management, and stakeholder communication—embedding directly with customers to take our product from “design” to “in production.”

You’ll own one account at a time: scope the workflow with business and technical stakeholders, design the architecture, write the code that closes the gaps, and drive the deployment through to measurable business value.

Responsibilities

  • Technical architecture. Own data flow, integration topology, identity model, and deployment architecture across the customer’s infrastructure.
  • Hands-on coding. Write production code yourself—backend services, data pipelines, APIs, integrations.
  • Product ownership. Own the deployment’s roadmap. Execute on the statement of work. Decide what’s in scope, what’s a one-off, and what should become product.
  • Project management. Own the plan, milestones, risks, and dependencies. When something slips, know first and flag first.
  • Stakeholder communication. Run customer working sessions, brief executive sponsors, and write clean status updates that senior stakeholders will actually read.
  • Ship into production. Deploy from dev through UAT into production—including integration with customer data warehouses, ERP/CRM systems, and cloud environments (AWS, Azure, GCP).
  • Enterprise readiness. Ensure the platform is configured, secured, and monitored to meet enterprise security and compliance requirements (SOC 2, ISO 27001, data residency, etc.).
  • Bridge field back to product. Push field learnings into the core platform so the next deployment is faster.
  • Account growth and development. Partner with Sales to identify expansion opportunities within the account—surfacing new use cases, supporting renewal conversations, and ensuring successful deployments convert to long-term customer relationships.

Qualifications

  • BS/MS in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.
  • 6+ years shipping production software, with 2+ years as a tech lead or senior individual contributor owning delivery end-to-end.
  • Strong proficiency in Python, TypeScript/JavaScript, Java, Go, or C++.
  • Demonstrated ownership of systems taken from zero to production in a commercial or enterprise context.
  • Bring deep expertise in at least one vertical (financial services, healthcare, energy, manufacturing, or defense) to accelerate time-to-value and credibility with customer stakeholders.
  • Experience working directly with business and technical stakeholders at mid-market or enterprise accounts—comfortable in both exec-level conversations and deep technical design sessions.
  • Familiarity with enterprise data environments: cloud data warehouses (Snowflake, Databricks, BigQuery, Redshift), REST/GraphQL APIs, and common ERP or CRM platforms.
  • Comfort with modern deployment practices: CI/CD, containerization (Docker/Kubernetes), cloud-native services, and infrastructure-as-code (Terraform or equivalent).

Preferred Qualifications

  • Prior experience as a tech lead or staff engineer at a SaaS or enterprise software vendor with a forward-deployed or professional services motion.
  • Experience with AI/ML platform deployments or data-heavy enterprise applications at scale.
  • Familiarity with major cloud environments: AWS, Azure, or GCP, including managed ML/AI services.
  • Experience in regulated industries (healthcare/life sciences, manufacturing, energy) where compliance and change management are part of the delivery.
  • Proven ability to turn a messy, ambiguous customer problem into a clean, repeatable deployment pattern.

Candidates must be authorized to work in the United States without the need for current or future company sponsorship.

C3 AI provides excellent benefits, a competitive compensation package and generous equity plan.

Illinois Base Pay Range
$130,000$194,000 USD

C3 AI is proud to be an Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action Employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of any legally protected characteristics, including disabled and veteran status.

What this application asks

greenhouse

First Name, Last Name, Email, Phone, Resume/CV, Location

  • LinkedIn Profile
  • How did you hear about C3 AI? choose one
  • What is highest level of education you have completed? choose one
  • Where are you currently located?
  • Are you willing to work 5x week from our Chicago office? choose one
  • Do you now or will you in the future need C3 AI to sponsor you for a visa to work in the United States (e.g., H-1B; O-1; TN; E-3)? choose one
  • By clicking the “I Accept” button, you confirm that you have read C3 AI’s Applicant & Candidate Privacy Notice [https://c3.ai/c3ai-inc-applicant-and-candidate-privacy-notice] and you provide the specific consents identified below. Except where C3 AI expressly asks for your consent, C3 AI processes your personal data for recruitment on the basis of its legitimate interests and to take steps at your request before any employment relationship, and you are not required to consent to that processing: C3 AI collects your personal data for the purposes of managing C3 AI's recruitment related activities as well as for organizational planning purposes globally. Consequently, C3 AI may use your personal data in relation to the evaluation and selection of applicants including for example setting up and conducting interviews and tests, evaluating and assessing the results thereto and as is otherwise needed in the recruitment processes including the final recruitment. Some evaluations are assisted by automated tools: C3 AI uses AI-based matching to compare your application against the requirements of the role and, for some roles, an AI-based “Voice AI” tool that records and analyzes a voice screening interview. A member of our team reviews the results and makes the final decision, and no decision is made based solely on automated processing. You may request more information about the logic involved, request a review by a person, and — for voice interviews — decline to be recorded and request a standard interview instead, in each case without any penalty to your application. C3 AI does not disclose your personal data to unauthorized third parties. However, as a global corporation consisting of multiple affiliated companies in various countries, C3 AI has international sites and C3 AI uses resources located throughout the world. C3 AI may from time to time also use third parties to act on C3 AI's behalf. You agree to the fact that to the extent necessary your personal data may be transferred and/or disclosed to any company within C3 AI group of companies as well as to third parties acting on C3 AI's behalf, including also transfers to servers and databases outside the country where you provided C3 AI with your personal data. Such transfers may include for example transfers and/or disclosures outside the European Economic Area (“EEA”) and in the United States of America; in such cases, the transfer is based on, as applicable, the Standard Contractual Clauses (according to Commission Implementing Decision (EU) 2021/914, and, for transfers from the United Kingdom, the UK International Data Transfer Addendum), the EU-US Data Privacy Framework where applicable, or other GDPR-compliant mechanisms. You may withdraw any consent at any time, and exercise your rights of access, correction, deletion, objection, and (where applicable) your ARCO rights, by contacting C3 Legal at [email protected] withdrawing consent will not affect processing carried out before the withdrawal. C3 AI will not retaliate against you for exercising these rights or for declining to consent. Full details of how C3 AI handles your information, how long it is kept, and your rights are set out in our Applicant & Candidate Privacy Notice [https://c3.ai/c3ai-inc-applicant-and-candidate-privacy-notice]. choose any
  • Do you consent to receiving follow up communication via text message (or SMS message) regarding your application to the phone number you provided? choose one

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