Tribe AI
Forward Deployed CTO
6d ago
300000 –450000 USD / yearUSAC-levelRemote
Lead technical transformation for enterprise clients and develop reusable intellectual property to ensure consistent delivery excellence in AI consulting.
Responsibilities
- The Forward Deployed CTO is a field executive who owns the technical transformation of a focused portfolio of enterprise clients — and uses that work to build something lasting for Tribe.
- This isn't a delivery management role. You're not running status meetings or coordinating handoffs. You're the person a Fortune 500 CTO calls when they need to make a consequential decision about AI, and you're also the person building the methodology that makes Tribe's delivery consistently excellent across every account.
- You'll own 1–2 high-stakes client engagements deeply — setting technical direction, leading cross-functional teams, and holding the bar on what ships. In parallel, you'll translate what you learn in the field into reusable Tribe IP: architecture patterns, evaluation frameworks, deployment playbooks. That internal work is as central to the role as the client work.
- This is the role for a technical founder-operator who wants to drive transformation at scale without taking all the startup risk.
Requirements
- 12+ years of engineering experience with deep expertise in AI/ML and production systems.
- You've founded a company or built a 0-to-1 product as a technical lead. You know what it means to own an outcome, not just a workstream.
- Strong command of the modern AI stack: LLMs, agentic frameworks, RAG, vector infrastructure, cloud deployment, and evaluation pipelines.
- Background in client-facing or consulting engineering where delivery accountability was real — not advisory.
- Executive presence: you can hold a room with a Fortune 500 CTO and earn trust in the first conversation.
- You think in systems and patterns. You see what's reusable across client problems before anyone else does.
- Comfortable managing ambiguity across high-stakes accounts without losing track of what matters.
Other
- Tribe embeds senior AI engineers and technical leaders directly into enterprise clients to drive AI transformation that actually ships. We're not a traditional consulting firm — we're operators who build alongside clients, own outcomes, and leave behind systems and capabilities that endure.
- Own technical delivery across a focused portfolio of 1–2 enterprise accounts — setting direction, managing risk, and holding the standard on outcomes.
- Act as the senior technical partner for C-suite stakeholders: translate business problems into architectural decisions and make those decisions defensible.
- Guide clients through the hardest AI transformation decisions — when to automate, when to augment, how to govern, and how to scale what's working.
- Be the person clients call when something is critical or when they need a strategic perspective, not just a project update.
- Build reusable Tribe IP from your client work: architecture patterns, evaluation frameworks, deployment playbooks, and tooling that raises the floor for every FDE team.
- Develop Tribe's point of view in your domain — whether that's healthcare, financial services, supply chain, or another vertical you know deeply.
- Spot what's generalizable before anyone else does. The best FD-CTOs don't just solve one client's problem — they solve it in a way that makes the next engagement faster and sharper.
- Hire, develop, and retain FD Engineers, Architects, and PMs across your accounts.
- Create conditions for your teams to do their best work — clear scope, the right tools, and air cover to move fast.
- Run 1:1s and performance conversations that actually accelerate people's growth, not just check the box.
- The bottleneck in enterprise AI is no longer model capability — it's deployment. Getting from a working prototype to a system that materially changes a company's revenue or cost line is hard, and most firms can't do it consistently. Tribe can, and the FD-CTO is the person who proves it at the highest level.
- The FDE function is the fastest-growing role in tech — FDE job postings grew 729% year-over-year in 2026. OpenAI formalized its deployment function at scale. The category is being defined in real time, and Tribe is building the best forward-deployed team in AI.
- What you build here — the methodology, the frameworks, the client relationships, the team — is a body of work you'll point to for the rest of your career.