Sr. Manager, AI Forward Deployed Engineering (AI-FDE)

Heavy focus on GenAI and production AI/ML deployments for customers; not explicitly about vibe coding or developer tooling like Cursor.

About the Role

Lead and grow Databricks' EMEA Forward Deployed AI Engineering team, delivering customer-facing GenAI and ML professional services, scaling the practice, and managing strategic enterprise accounts to productionize AI solutions.

Job Description

Role

Senior Manager, AI Forward Deployed Engineering (AI-FDE) leading the EMEA AI FDE team. You will lead customer AI/ML transformations, manage a portfolio of strategic EMEA accounts, recruit and develop data scientists and ML engineers, and influence product and GTM strategy through customer insights.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead, hire, mentor, and scale a customer-facing AI/ML professional services team across EMEA.
• Manage strategic relationships with executive stakeholders (VP+, CIO/CDO) and act as a trusted advisor during complex technical engagements.
• Align with Field Engineering and Sales to define joint strategies and ensure coordinated, high-quality delivery across functions.
• Define and lead strategic AI professional services initiatives, practice development, and standardized delivery processes; design scalable engagement models and reusable solutions.
• Drive cross-functional collaboration with Product, R&D, and GTM to surface voice-of-customer insights that inform roadmap and go-to-market strategy.
• Own OKRs for AI-services accounts, revenue, utilization, and public references.
• Represent Databricks as a thought leader in AI/ML.

Requirements

• Extensive experience managing and scaling teams of data scientists, ML engineers, and leaders, with a track record building scalable processes and developing leaders.
• Ability to scope, guide, and commercially enable technical engagements, manage escalations, and ensure successful enterprise delivery.
• Deep technical expertise in machine learning, GenAI, and data science, with a commitment to staying current in the field.
• Experience leading teams that build production ML solutions in cloud environments (AWS, Azure, or GCP).
• Proven success in developing strategy with senior executive stakeholders and aligning technical vision in complex enterprise engagements.
• Demonstrated cross-functional leadership working with Sales, Product, and GTM teams.

Preferred

• Experience in customer-facing consulting or professional services leadership.
• Experience working with Databricks.

Location & Work Authorization

• Role is based in Munich, Germany. Candidates must be based in the Germany region only (not remote from any other country).

Databricks GenAI AWS Azure GCP Genie Lakebase Agent Bricks Lakeflow Lakehouse Unity Catalog

Skills

Leadership Team Building Hiring Mentoring Stakeholder Management Executive Relationship Management Cross-functional Collaboration Program Management Delivery Management Professional Services Customer-facing Consulting Technical Sales / Pre-sales Strategy OKR Ownership Product Influence Scalability & Process Design Communication Machine Learning / GenAI expertise Cloud Architecture