Deployment Strategist

Our Mission

Salt AI is building the intelligence layer for the enterprise, starting with life sciences, financial services, and the energy sector. In a world where AI is fragmented across models, tools, and data silos, Salt unifies them through a compliance-first orchestration platform that lets regulated organizations deploy AI securely, at scale, and with confidence.

We’re creating the backend systems that power real-world AI workflows across a multitude of industries where out-of-the-box consumer tools don’t cut it. Our platform turns complex, regulated environments into intelligent, adaptive systems where autonomous AI agents operate in harmony with existing infrastructure.

About the Role

As a Deployment Strategist, you own our most strategic enterprise deployments end to end — from initial scoping through production go-live and customer self-sufficiency. Reporting to the Chief Customer Officer, you’ll work with leading pharma, biotech, investment banking, and energy enterprises deploying Salt into demanding SaaS, VPC, and on-prem environments.

This is a senior, judgment-heavy role. You define what we’re building, negotiate what we’re not, direct the Forward Deployed Engineers and Customer Solutions Engineers assigned to your accounts, and hold the line when a customer pushes to expand scope mid-engagement. You’ll keep engagement detail current in our existing AI-first project management flow (Slack → Notion → Linear), where engineers groom their own tickets — so your time goes to scoping and direction, not ticket administration.

You’ll deliver highly technical projects on time, on budget, and above expectation. You’ll guide customers through the process, manage expectations, manage internal resources to successful delivery, and collaborate with sales to guide them towards expansion opportunities.

The Role (What You’ll Be Doing)

Scope

• Scope engagements down to one or two named workflows with fixed timelines, and drive customer stakeholders to converge on them quickly. Define the engagement exit before work begins: what customer self-sufficiency looks like, written down and agreed.
• Own the SOW Approval Gate on new and expansion business — no contract or SOW goes to a customer without your sign-off on scope, timeline, and capacity, including the authority to decline out-of-scope asks from senior customer stakeholders.
• Partner with Sales on expansion: they lead the pursuit, you control what can be committed on scope, timeline, and capacity.

Execute

• Build and run the engagement plan: milestones, workstreams, owners, and dependencies across Salt and customer teams, with a weekly cadence that surfaces slippage early.
• Drive customer-side dependencies to closure — data access, security and IT reviews, environment provisioning, and stakeholder availability — where enterprise deployments most often stall.
• Manage risks, issues, and escalations proactively, and escalate early, internally or to the customer sponsor.
• Own delivery quality: acceptance criteria and evals agreed at scoping, testing and validation (including GxP where applicable), and production readiness through go-live and hypercare.
• Lead enablement: training, documentation, and change management so customer teams can run the workflows themselves.
• Track effort, budget, and capacity across your accounts, and flag early when an engagement is at risk on timeline or cost.

Lead, Grow & Build

• Provide leadership, prioritization, and technical direction to the Forward Deployed Engineers and Customer Solutions Engineers assigned to your accounts.
• Lead executive communication with customer sponsors throughout the engagement lifecycle.
• Stay engaged after go-live on the technical outcome, adoption depth and scoping the next workflow. Sales owns the account relationship and review cadence.
• Run post-engagement debriefs and drive field learning back into product and platform priorities.
• Build reusable delivery patterns — templates, integration components, and reference architectures that make each subsequent engagement faster.
• Work with the account’s Executive Advisor to bring domain expertise into scoping and validate outputs where correctness depends on it.

Requirements - Core Skills (Must Have)

• 5+ years owning complex enterprise technical deployments end to end — as a forward deployed engineer, technical program manager, solutions architect, or delivery lead at a technical consultancy or enterprise software company.

• Delivery execution: a track record running multi-workstream enterprise deployments to on-time go-live, where much of the critical path sat on the customer side.

• Technical fluency: enough depth in cloud architecture, APIs, data pipelines, and integration patterns to scope work credibly and direct engineers without needing translation. Engineering or technical background required.

• Scope discipline: demonstrated ability to hold a line against pressure from senior stakeholders, and the judgment to know when holding is right.

• Written communication and document hygiene: scopes, exit criteria, and decisions live in writing, not in your head.

• Executive presence: credible in the room with VP- and C-level customer sponsors at large enterprises.

• Comfort with ambiguity: our customers often don’t know their highest-value use case when we arrive, and finding it is part of the job.

• Willingness to travel as-needed for client implementation work.

Preferred/Bonus Skills (Nice To Have)

• Experience with on-premise, VPC, or air-gapped deployments in regulated industries — pharma, life sciences, financial services, or government.

• Familiarity with GxP, HIPAA, SOC 2, or similar compliance and validation frameworks.

• Background at a company running a forward deployed engineering model.

• Hands‑on experience with AI/ML workflows, model deployment, or agent orchestration.

• Track record turning one-off engagements into repeatable delivery motions.

What Makes You A Great Fit

• You measure success by whether the customer is actually using what you built — not whether it shipped.

• You’d rather say no early than deliver a bloated engagement late.

• You run a tight operating rhythm: everyone knows what’s happening this week, what’s at risk, and who owns it.

• You’re energized by walking into a messy enterprise environment and finding the one workflow that matters most.

• You’re comfortable being the most senior person in the room on delivery, and the person accountable when it goes sideways.

• You want to build the function, not just work in it — this is the first Deployment Strategist at Salt, and the patterns you set become how we operate.

• You’re excited to apply your skills to AI in life sciences, financial services, and the energy sector where you can support teams doing high-impact work.

Perks And Benefits

• Competitive salary based on location and experience.
• Comprehensive health coverage, including medical, dental, mental health.
• Fully remote role, collaborating primarily within U.S. time zones.

Based in Southern California, Salt AI is pioneering the future of life sciences with advanced AI. Founded in 2024 by Aber Whitcomb and Jim Benedetto—veterans of MySpace, Jam City, Gravity, and Core Scientific—our leadership team brings over 15 years of collaboration. We’re not just building products, but transforming what’s possible in research and discovery. We value diverse perspectives and are committed to an inclusive team. If you’re excited about shaping the future of AI in life sciences, we’d love to connect with you.