Engineering Lead, Strategic Deployments
At a glance
Senior Engineering Leadership role at Decagon. New York · full-time · $200,000–$400,000 base.
techroles summary, based on the employer's posting.
What you'll do
- Lead the technical work for one to three major deployments, from proof of concept through launch and early production support
- Work with customer engineering and product leaders to clarify what success requires and build internal technical advocates
- Spot delivery risks early, then resolve them before they put the deal at risk
- Turn one customer's needs into reusable product improvements by finding the underlying problem behind feature requests
- Set engineering direction, deliver the work, and mentor your team across infrastructure, agent development, evaluation, research, and reliability
What you bring
- At least five years in software engineering, with experience as an engineering leader or technical founder
- You are comfortable working directly with customers and taking responsibility for high-stakes accounts with ambiguity
- You can compare technical approaches under pressure, including their likely timelines and risks
Who this fits
This role suits a senior engineering leader or former technical founder who wants hands-on ownership of customer deployments and product direction. You’ll work onsite in New York and lead and mentor engineers. Productionizing agentic systems is a plus.
From the employer
About Decagon
Decagon is the leading conversational AI platform empowering every brand to deliver concierge customer experiences.
Our technology enables industry-defining enterprises like Avis Budget Group, Block’s Cash App and Square, Chime, Oura Health, and Hunter Douglas to deploy AI agents that power personalized, deeply satisfying interactions across voice, chat, email, SMS, and every other channel.
We’re building a future where customer experiences are being redefined from support tickets and hold music to faster resolutions, richer conversations, and deeper relationships. We’re proud to be backed by world-class investors who share that vision, including a16z, Accel, Bain Capital Ventures, Coatue, and Index Ventures, along with many others.
We’re an in-office company, driven by a shared commitment to excellence and velocity. Our values — Just Get It Done, Invent What Customers Want, Winner’s Mindset, and The Polymath Principle — shape how we work and grow as a team.
About the Role
Decagon's Strategic Deals are with the largest companies in the world. Each one puts a Decagon agent in front of millions of users, fielding hundreds of millions of conversations a year. These deals are won on technical execution: hard problems without an off-the-shelf answer, latency and reliability constraints at real scale, and requirements that push the product into new territory.
You'll own the technical build for 1–3 Strategic Deals end-to-end, operating like the founding CTO of each. You'll work directly with the customer’s senior engineering and product leaders to figure out what they need for the deal to be successful.
From there, you decide what Decagon should build, ship it, and productionize it so it benefits every customer, not just this one. You're across every technical workstream on the deal, from infrastructure and the agent build to model evaluation, research, and the reliability work that makes it production-grade. You sit at the center of product strategy: your decisions shape not only each deployment, but also the feature set that gets reflected in the product itself.
In this role, you will
Own the technical build end-to-end for a handful of Strategic Deals, from POC through close and into post-close stabilization
Drive technical requirements directly with the customer’s engineering and product leaders, and build technical champions inside their organizations
Identify technical risks early and de-risk them before they threaten the deal
Dig past feature requests to the underlying problem, then scope solutions that generalize, turning bespoke deal requirements into durable improvements to the core Decagon product
Set technical direction, own delivery, and mentor the engineers on your team
Your background looks something like this
A strong engineering leader or ex-technical founder with 5+ years of industry experience in software engineering
Strong appetite for customer-facing work
Comfort owning high-stakes accounts with significant ambiguity
The ability to quickly assess how long different technical paths will take, weigh their risks, and choose between them under pressure
Bonus: experience productionizing agentic systems
Compensation
$200K – $400K + Offers Equity
Benefits
We proudly offer the following benefits for our full-time employees:
Medical, Dental, and Vision benefits for you and your family
Life Insurance and Disability Benefits
Retirement Plan (e.g., 401K, pension)
Parental Leave
Fertility and family building benefits through Carrot
Monthly stipend to support your wellness, lifestyle, and work-life balance
Daily lunches and snacks in the office to keep you at your best
Take what you need vacation policy (subject to local requirements; UK employees receive 25 days of statutory leave)
These benefits are described in more detail in Decagon’s policies, may vary by location, and can change at any time according to applicable compensation and benefits plans.
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