Director, Forward Deployed AI Engineering at Natera

<h1><strong>About the Role</strong></h1> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p><span style="color: #1a1a2e;">The Head of AI Solutions will lead a Forward Deployed AI engineering team and owns the delivery of AI-powered workflow transformation across Sales &amp; Marketing, Finance, Legal, HR, Business Development, Business Operations and other related G&amp;A functions. This is a player-coach role in the truest sense: you lead a team of Forward Deployed AI Solutions Engineers, but you are also consistently in the work alongside them — scoping workflows, building, debugging, and iterating in production.</span></p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p><span style="color: #1a1a2e;">We believe the pace of change in AI makes proximity to the work non-negotiable at every level of the organization. The expectation is that roughly half your time is spent building and shipping alongside your engineers, using that firsthand knowledge to make better prioritization calls, give feedback, and earn the trust of both your team and the business stakeholders you serve.</span></p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p><span style="color: #1a1a2e;">You partner closely with the AI Platform team to ensure every workflow transitions cleanly to long-term ownership, and you bring patterns and reusable assets back to the broader AI &amp; Automation organization.</span></p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <h1><strong>What You'll Own</strong></h1> <p><span style="color: #1a1a2e;"><strong>Build and ship alongside your team</strong></span></p> <ul> <li style="color: #1a1a2e !important;"> <p><span style="color: #1a1a2e;">Spend meaningful time as a hands-on contributor — scoping workflows end-to-end, building agents and automation pipelines, debugging integration issues, and tuning prompts and context in production.</span></p> </li> <li style="color: #1a1a2e !important;"> <p><span style="color: #1a1a2e;">Set the technical bar through your own work: production-grade evals, observability, clean handoff documentation, and rigorous testing before anything ships.</span></p> </li> <li style="color: #1a1a2e !important;"> <p><span style="color: #1a1a2e;">Jump in when a deployment is stalled, a system integration is unexpectedly gnarly, or a workflow needs a senior engineer's judgment to get unstuck.</span></p> </li> </ul> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p><span style="color: #1a1a2e;"><strong>Lead and develop the Forward Deployed team</strong></span></p> <ul> <li style="color: #1a1a2e !important;"> <p><span style="color: #1a1a2e;">Hire, manage, and develop Forward Deployed AI Solutions Engineers embedded across S&amp;M + G&amp;A domains.</span></p> </li> <li style="color: #1a1a2e !important;"> <p><span style="color: #1a1a2e;">Set clear success criteria for each deployment — throughput, quality, cost, human intervention rate, cycle time — and hold the team accountable.</span></p> </li> <li style="color: #1a1a2e !important;"> <p><span style="color: #1a1a2e;">Ensure the team brings patterns, reusable assets, and hard-won learnings back to the central AI &amp; Data organization so the whole company compounds on what you build.</span></p> </li> </ul> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p><span style="color: #1a1a2e;"><strong>Partner with Sales, Marketing and G&amp;A leadership to set and execute the roadmap</strong></span></p> <ul> <li style="color: #1a1a2e !important;"> <p><span style="color: #1a1a2e;">Maintain a prioritized pipeline of AI and automation opportunities surfaced through domain embeds, business reviews, and your own discovery work.</span></p> </li> <li style="color: #1a1a2e !important;"> <p><span style="color: #1a1a2e;">Build and present business cases with projected ROI and clear KPIs to gain alignment from domain leadership, your manager, and your peer AI Forward Deployed Engineering Leads</span></p> </li> <li style="color: #1a1a2e !important;"> <p><span style="color: #1a1a2e;">Act as a trusted technical advisor to Sales, Marketing, and G&amp;A function heads — translating their goals into a grounded, sequenced roadmap and keeping them informed as priorities shift.</span></p> </li> </ul> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p><span style="color: #1a1a2e;"><strong>Own the full deployment lifecycle — including handoffs to Platform</strong></span></p> <ul> <li style="color: #1a1a2e !important;"> <p><span style="color: #1a1a2e;">Drive deployments from discovery through production: workflow design, agent build, integration, human-in-the-loop checkpoints, evals, observability, and enablement.</span></p> </li> <li style="color: #1a1a2e !important;"> <p><span style="color: #1a1a2e;">Leverage the Platform to accelerate your build and ask the Platform engineering team to add more reusable features to the Platform to accelerate future builds</span></p> </li> <li> <p><span style="color: #1a1a2e;">Partner with the Platform Engineering team to establish and follow handoff standards — ensuring every workflow transitions with proper documentation, runbooks, SLAs, and instrumentation in place.</span></p> </li> <li style="color: #1a1a2e !important;"> <p><span style="color: #1a1a2e;">Re-engage when business conditions change materially and a handed-off workflow needs meaningful rework.</span></p> </li> <li style="color: #1a1a2e !important;"> <p><span style="color: #1a1a2e;">Instrument observability across all deployed workflows: tracing, structured logs, dashboards.</span></p> </li> </ul> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p><span style="color: #1a1a2e;"><strong>Navigate stakeholders and manage delivery</strong></span></p> <ul> <li style="color: #1a1a2e !important;"> <p><span style="color: #1a1a2e;">Serve as the primary contact for S&amp;M + G&amp;A function heads throughout every AI initiative, from kickoff through sustained production operation.</span></p> </li> <li style="color: #1a1a2e !important;"> <p><span style="color: #1a1a2e;">Drive change management: prepare stakeholders for new workflows, set expectations on human review requirements, and push for adoption beyond initial launch.</span></p> </li> <li style="color: #1a1a2e !important;"> <p><span style="color: #1a1a2e;">Report progress and business impact to the Head of AI/ML &amp; Data function on a regular cadence, translating technical metrics into business outcomes.</span></p> </li> <li style="color: #1a1a2e !important;"> <p><span style="color: #1a1a2e;">Partner with IT, Security, Legal, and Compliance to ensure all deployments meet data governance and access control requirements.</span></p> </li> <li> <p>&nbsp;</p> </li> </ul> <h1><strong>What We're Looking For</strong></h1> <p><span style="color: #1a1a2e;"><strong>Hands-on technical depth</strong></span></p> <ul> <li style="color: #1a1a2e !important;"> <p><span style="color: #1a1a2e;">You write code, build agents, and debug production systems. This is not a delegating-only role and you should not want it to be.</span></p> </li> <li style="color: #1a1a2e !important;"> <p><span style="color: #1a1a2e;">Strong working knowledge of LLM and agent behavior: prompting, context management, tool use, RAG, MCP, evals, and failure modes.</span></p> </li> <li style="color: #1a1a2e !important;"> <p><span style="color: #1a1a2e;">Comfortable with CLIs, APIs, webhooks, SQL, Python scripting, and cloud platforms. You can integrate with enterprise systems — CRM, ERP, ticketing, document stores — and handle the messy reality of enterprise data.</span></p> </li> <li style="color: #1a1a2e !important;"> <p><span style="color: #1a1a2e;">Experience running agents in production with formal KPI tracking, eval frameworks, and observability standards.</span></p> </li> </ul> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p><span style="color: #1a1a2e;"><strong>Leadership and business partnership</strong></span></p> <ul> <li style="color: #1a1a2e !important;"> <p><span style="color: #1a1a2e;">Track record of leading technical teams while remaining a meaningful technical contributor yourself.</span></p> </li> <li style="color: #1a1a2e !important;"> <p><span style="color: #1a1a2e;">Ability to earn trust with senior business stakeholders and translate their goals into an executable roadmap with clear sequencing and trade-offs.</span></p> </li> <li style="color: #1a1a2e !important;"> <p><span style="color: #1a1a2e;">Strong written and verbal communication. For example, you can make a complex AI system legible to a CFO and a business constraint legible to an engineer.</span></p> </li> <li style="color: #1a1a2e !important;"> <p><span style="color: #1a1a2e;">Comfortable being the most technically credible person in a business review and the most commercially grounded person in a technical design session.</span></p> </li> </ul> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p><span style="color: #1a1a2e;"><strong>Operational rigor</strong></span></p> <ul> <li style="color: #1a1a2e !important;"> <p><span style="color: #1a1a2e;">Security and compliance mindset: least-privilege, auditability, and safe rollback are second nature.</span></p> </li> <li style="color: #1a1a2e !important;"> <p><span style="color: #1a1a2e;">Experience owning handoff processes and governance frameworks — not just deploying fast, but deploying durably.</span></p> </li> <li style="color: #1a1a2e !important;"> <p><span style="color: #1a1a2e;">You think in outcomes and KPIs, can defend prioritization calls, and hold yourself to the same production standards you hold your team to.</span></p> </li> </ul> <h1><strong>Nice to Have</strong></h1> <ul> <li style="color: #1a1a2e !important;"> <p><span style="color: #1a1a2e;">Prior experience in forward-deployed engineering or Data/AI related technical operations.</span></p> </li> <li style="color: #1a1a2e !important;"> <p><span style="color: #1a1a2e;">Hands-on experience with an enterprise agentic platform (CrewAI, LangChain, AWS Bedrock, Claude, Codex) or directly against a model API.</span></p> </li> <li style="color: #1a1a2e !important;"> <p><span style="color: #1a1a2e;">Background in or deep familiarity with one or more SG&amp;A functions: Finance, Sales Ops, Legal Ops, HR, or Customer Experience.</span></p> </li> <li style="color: #1a1a2e !important;"> <p><span style="color: #1a1a2e;">Experience in regulated environments: HIPAA, SOC 2, GxP, or SOX.</span></p> </li> </ul><div class="content-pay-transparency"><div class="pay-input"><div class="description">The pay range is listed and actual compensation packages are based on a wide array of factors unique to each candidate, including but not limited to skill set, years &amp; depth of experience, certifications and specific office location. This may differ in other locations due to cost of labor considerations.</div><div class="title">Remote USA</div><div class="pay-range"><span>$186,700</span><span class="divider">&mdash;</span><span>$233,400 USD</span></div></div></div><div class="content-conclusion"><p><strong>OUR OPPORTUNITY</strong></p> <p>Natera™ is a global leader in cell-free DNA (cfDNA) testing, dedicated to oncology, women’s health, and organ health. Our aim is to make personalized genetic testing and diagnostics part of the standard of care to protect health and enable earlier and more targeted interventions that lead to longer, healthier lives.</p> <p>The Natera team consists of highly dedicated statisticians, geneticists, doctors, laboratory scientists, business professionals, software engineers and many other professionals from world-class institutions, who care deeply for our work and each other. When you join Natera, you’ll work hard and grow quickly. Working alongside the elite of the industry, you’ll be stretched and challenged, and take pride in being part of a company that is changing the landscape of genetic disease management.</p> <p><strong>WHAT WE OFFER</strong></p> <p>Competitive Benefits - Employee benefits include comprehensive medical, dental, vision, life and disability plans for eligible employees and their dependents. Additionally, Natera employees and their immediate families receive free testing in addition to fertility care benefits. Other benefits include pregnancy and baby bonding leave, 401k benefits, commuter benefits and much more. We also offer a generous employee referral program!</p> <p>For more information, visit <a href="http://www.natera.com/" data-cke-saved-href="http://www.natera.com/">www.natera.com</a>.</p> <p>Natera is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. We are committed to ensuring a diverse and inclusive workplace environment, and welcome people of different backgrounds, experiences, abilities and perspectives. Inclusive collaboration benefits our employees, our community and our patients, and is critical to our mission of changing the management of disease worldwide.</p> <p>All qualified applicants are encouraged to apply, and will be considered without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, age, veteran status, disability or any other legally protected status. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with applicable laws.</p> <p><em>If you are based in California, we encourage you to read this important information for California residents.&nbsp;</em></p> <p>Link: <a href="https://www.natera.com/notice-of-data-collection-california-residents" target="_blank">https://www.natera.com/notice-of-data-collection-california-residents/</a></p> <p>Please be advised that Natera will reach out to candidates with a @<a href="http://natera.com/" target="_blank" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://natera.com&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1657718972773000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3zRwaIiu7070kJKNG4hjRm">natera.com</a>&nbsp;email domain ONLY. Email communications from all other domain names are not from Natera or its employees and are fraudulent. Natera does not request interviews via text messages and does not ask for personal information until a candidate has engaged with the company and has spoken to a recruiter and the hiring team. Natera takes cyber crimes seriously, and will collaborate with law enforcement authorities to prosecute any related cyber crimes.</p> <p>For more information:<br>- <a href="https://www.bbb.org/article/tips/12261-bbb-tip-employment-scams" target="_blank">BBB announcement on job scams</a>&nbsp;<br>- <a href="https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/cyber" target="_blank">FBI Cyber Crime resource page</a>&nbsp;</p></div>