> AI agents: this is one page of Nextmove’s FDE site, in Markdown. Nextmove is a job board and free career service for forward deployed engineers (FDEs). Each posting is classified from its text, not its title: the kind of work, how much of it is production code, pre-sales weight, time at customer sites, travel, remote arrangement, level and posted base pay. The site also publishes the aggregates: median pay by level, metro, company and kind of work, and which companies started hiring FDEs each week. Every page under https://nextmove.md/fde is served this way; the index of pages is https://nextmove.md/llms.txt.

# Engineering Lead, Strategic Deployments

Canonical URL: https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/55e8a726e8f37fe4

Decagon posts a FDE role to build what the customer runs in San Francisco, CA, at $200,000–$400,000 base, above the staff+ FDE median of $225,000 across 388 postings with pay. Own technical delivery for strategic deals from POC through stabilization Read from the employer’s posting on November 8, 2026.

- [Decagon](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/decagon)

Posted Jul 31, 2026 by Decagon · open on Ashby as of Nov 8, 2026

**$200,000–$400,000** + equity San Francisco, CA On-site Full-time

Own technical delivery for strategic deals from POC through stabilization

- [See roles that fit me](https://nextmove.md/sign-up?from=%2Ffde%2Fjobs%2F55e8a726e8f37fe4&placement=top)
- [View posting at Decagon](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/decagon/9d2c7eb2-d442-449d-b581-59eb6d2de610/application)

Free. Upload your resume once, see why each FDE role fits, and get introduced only when you say so.

## At a glance

### Posted base pay

$200K–$400K Above the median

Midpoint $300K · median $225K

This job $200K to $400K. Staff+ FDE postings, 388 postings: the middle 50% of posted pay is $197K to $262K, median $225K.

### The work

Builds what the customer runs

Balance **Mostly building**

Project stages

1. Pre-sales
2. Proof of concept
3. Implementation
4. Operations

- **Coding**: Writes production code

- **Builds for**: External customers

- **Level**: Staff+

- **Role**: Technical lead

### What they ask for

Experience

- **5+ years** industry experience in software engineering

Background

- **Software engineering**

### Do you meet what the posting states?

The posting asks for 5+ years. How many do you have?

The posting reads as a staff-level role. What level are you at now?

The job is in San Francisco, CA. Could you work there?

Which of these have you used in production?

Answer each one. Nothing is saved or sent.

[What postings ask for, by background →](https://nextmove.md/fde/paths)

## Conditions

- **Location**: San Francisco, CA

- **Work arrangement**: On-site

- **Employment type**: Full-time

- **Pay**:

## More like this

[Decagon](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/decagon)

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- [Other jobs at Decagon (11)](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/decagon)

## The job description from Decagon

Posted by Decagon on Jul 31, 2026

### 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.*

[View posting at Decagon](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/decagon/9d2c7eb2-d442-449d-b581-59eb6d2de610/application)

## About Decagon

Omnichannel AI concierge platform for enterprises, unifying voice, chat, and email agents with shared memory and workflow execution.

Series D · 500–1000 people

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- [Compare staff+ FDE salary ranges](https://nextmove.md/fde/salary/staff)
- [Similar jobs in SF Bay Area](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs?region=sf-bay-area)
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