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# Industrial AI Forward Deployed Strategist

Canonical URL: https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/9dbf01327952c23d

Sight Machine posts a FDE role to plan what the customer deploys first in Ann Arbor, MI and 1 more, at $150,000–$200,000 base, below the senior FDE median of $190,000 across 1,864 postings with pay. Define and prioritize manufacturing use cases based on business value and technical feasibility Read from the employer’s posting on November 8, 2026.

- [Sight Machine](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/sight-machine)

First seen Oct 4, 2026 · open on Rippling as of Nov 8, 2026

**$150,000–$200,000** *annualized* Ann Arbor, MI +1 Hybrid

Define and prioritize manufacturing use cases based on business value and technical feasibility

- [See roles that fit me](https://nextmove.md/sign-up?from=%2Ffde%2Fjobs%2F9dbf01327952c23d&placement=top)
- [View posting at Sight Machine](https://ats.rippling.com/sightmachine/jobs/c2db79fd-516f-4723-84ba-d0525ea86ec2)

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

$150K–$200K Below the median

Midpoint $175K · median $190K

This job $150K to $200K. Senior FDE postings, 1,864 postings: the middle 50% of posted pay is $160K to $220K, median $190K.

### The work

Plans what the customer deploys first

Balance **Mixed**

Project stages

1. Pre-sales (not covered)
2. Proof of concept
3. Implementation (not covered)
4. Operations (not covered)

Travel **Up to 40%**

- **Coding**: Prototypes and scripts

- **Builds for**: External customers

- **Level**: Senior

- **Role**: Technical lead

### What they ask for

Experience

- **5+ years** overall professional experience, including significant time in manufacturing operations, industrial technology, or manufacturing-focused consulting
- **2+ years** role involving weekly work on a real plant floor

Background

- **Consulting**

### Do you meet what the posting states?

The posting asks for 2+ years. How many do you have?

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

The job is in Ann Arbor, MI · San Francisco, CA. Could you work in one of these?

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**: Ann Arbor, MI · San Francisco, CA

- **Work arrangement**: Hybrid

- **Remote work restrictions**: Hybrid in Ann Arbor, Michigan, or San Francisco, California

- **Travel**: Up to 40%

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## The job description from Sight Machine

### Team Culture

Great things happen when people can bring their authentic selves to work. We empower all of our employees to share their perspectives, passions and experiences because collectively we make a better, stronger team. Our team members collaborate closely with peers & cross functional stakeholders throughout the business, our clients on the forefront of digital transformation, and the cutting edge of digital manufacturing thought leadership.

We take pride in our self-starter culture where employees are enabled and encouraged to achieve their professional goals through leadership guidance, learning and development. Our philosophy is that careers are continuous journeys, and we dedicate time and offer resources so that employees can reach their full potential.

### Benefits + Perks

We value you at and outside of work and know your loved ones are important. Our benefits are designed to support you and your family’s health through life’s expected and unexpected events.

Our Benefits Include:

- Competitive Salary + Stock Options
- Health Care Coverage + Life Insurance + Health Savings Account + Flexible Spending
- Account (includes spouse + children)
- Flexible Vacation Policy
- Adaptable Working Schedule and Environment
- Our Perks Include:
- Casual Dress Attire
- Hybrid work flexibility
- Catered Lunches, Snacks and Beverages
- Commuter Savings Program
- Company Outings
- Designated Volunteering Hours + Group Volunteer Events

Sight Machine is proud to be an equal opportunity employer and considers candidates regardless of age, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status. Sight Machine also considers qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements.

### About Sight Machine, Inc.

Sight Machine strengthens manufacturers by providing the industry’s only standard data model and system-level visualization capabilities. By integrating all crucial data into a single innovative platform, everyone involved in the fabrication process can visualize, contextualize and examine data in one intuitive interface.

Sight Machine is committed and mission-driven to improve lives, strengthen communities and make the world cleaner through continuously re-envisioning manufacturing processes - making them more efficient, sustainable and absolute. Founded in Michigan in 2011 and expanded to San Francisco in 2012, Sight Machine blends the spirit of technology innovation and the down to earth style of Detroit manufacturing. Our team includes early leadership from Yahoo, Tesla Motors and Oracle. Together, we share wide industry knowledge and a commitment to advance manufacturing to a more sustainable future.

At Sight Machine, you will work with manufacturing leaders in the automotive, medical device, apparel, construction, and pharmaceutical industries. You will have access to, and work with massive amounts of factory floor data to help uncover insights on how customers make products and develop solutions to pressing business problems. The platform solves problems like Extract Transform Load (ETL), information retrieval, data aggregation and analytics, factory automation, distributed computing, and security.

We place great value on professional, technical, and personal growth in an inclusive, collaborative environment. The ideal candidate will have a passion for technology and a strong can-do attitude.

### About the Industrial AI Forward Deployed Strategist Role

As an Industrial AI Forward Deployed Strategist, you are the product manager and strategic architect for complex client engagements. You define what should be built and why, based on deep manufacturing context and a working understanding of what AI can do today.

This is not an advisory role. You will be on factory floors, in front of C-suite executives, and building working solutions — often in the same week.

### What You'll Do

- Develop deep understanding of each client's manufacturing operations, industry dynamics, and strategic objectives — starting on the plant floor rather than the data warehouse
- Define and prioritize use cases based on business value, technical feasibility, and strategic alignment
- Build working prototypes of dashboards, scripts, applications and validate ideas with real users.
- Design AI-powered workflows that operators, engineers, and executives will actually adopt
- Build trusted advisor relationships with C-suite executives, plant leadership, and operational stakeholders
- Navigate multi-layered organizational dynamics across operations, IT/OT, data science, and business intelligence functions
- Orchestrate delivery across parallel workstreams — owning project boards, reporting rhythms, and status meetings that keep everything visible
- Arbitrate scope and priority decisions, making explicit trade-offs based on business value and constraints
- Manage escalations and resolve the business and political issues that derail delivery
- Identify high-impact opportunities for predictive analytics, optimization, and intelligent automation, and partner with data science to design them
- Translate AI/ML concepts and value propositions for non-technical stakeholders
- Work with our Product team to scale what you build from one client into platform capability

### How We Work

**We build in public. **Your work lives where teammates can find it — shared drives, project boards, open channels. When you learn something useful, you share it unprompted. When you're underwater, someone can step in because they can see what you were doing. Nobody here hides their secret sauce.

**We put a stake in the ground. **We commit to a date and work backward from it, rather than working on something indefinitely and reporting progress. Outcomes over activity.

**We keep our promises. **If you say you'll do it, it's as good as done — the small things as much as the big ones. And when something is going to slip, we say so before it slips, not after. That's how trust gets built with clients and with each other.

### Qualifications

- 5–7 years of professional experience, with significant time in manufacturing operations, industrial technology, or manufacturing-focused consulting
- **At least 2 years in a role that put you on a real plant floor on a weekly basis.** How you got there matters less than what you learned there: that data is incomplete, sensors are fallible, tags are mislabeled, and the process on paper isn't the process running.
- **Able to build with AI.** You don't need to write Python from scratch, but you do need to use AI tools to produce working artifacts — a script, a dashboard, a small application — that hold up well enough to be used by someone else.
- Strong strategic thinking, with a track record of turning operational problems into solution strategies
- Exceptional communication skills across both technical and non-technical audiences
- Experience orchestrating multi-workstream projects with strong organizational and prioritization discipline

* **Also helpful, but not required***

- Background in data science, industrial engineering, or operations research
- Hands-on experience with data platforms, analytics tools, or Industrial IoT
- Familiarity with cloud infrastructure
- Enterprise-scale digital transformation experience
- Prior consulting experience at a top-tier strategy or technology firm

* **Travel***

Up to 40% domestic and international travel to client offices and factory sites for workshops, stakeholder meetings, floor walks, and on-site strategic sessions. Frequency varies by client.

### Pay range

Hybrid (San Francisco, California, US): 150,000 - 200,000 USD per year

[View posting at Sight Machine](https://ats.rippling.com/sightmachine/jobs/c2db79fd-516f-4723-84ba-d0525ea86ec2)

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