Lead Engineer ( Forward Deployed Engineer ) Santa Clara, CA

About EightfoldEightfold is a global leader in AI-native enterprise talent platform, trusted by the world’s largest & most respected fortune 500 organizations. Our platform is built from the ground up operating at scale across Azure and AWS, deployed in multiple regions globally, including IL4-compliant environments for US Government, supporting users in 100+ countries and 30+ languages. Today, Eightfold is at the forefront of agentic AI, delivering intelligent agents that actively drive outcomes across hiring and talent workflows, while much of the industry is still experimenting with prototypes. At Eightfold, we are defining the next era of agentic talent systems.What sets Eightfold apart is not just the technology & our mission, but the team behind it. We are a deeply technical, execution-driven organization that values ownership, collaboration, and high standards. Our engineers, product leaders, and go-to-market teams work closely together — in person and across functions — to build systems that scale in the real world. If you’re excited to work on hard problems, move with urgency, raise the bar every day, and help build agentic systems that transform how the world works, Eightfold is the place to do it.About the Role We are looking for a Lead Engineer to serve as a senior technical leader at the intersection of product engineering, platform architecture, and enterprise customer success.In this role, you will own the most complex and high-impact customer-facing technical challenges across the Eightfold platform. You will design and implement scalable solutions for enterprise customers, lead technical escalations, influence product direction based on real-world customer needs, and mentor engineers across teams.This position involves deep engagement with customer issues, the focus is on engineering durable solutions, improving platform capabilities, and eliminating entire classes of problems, not providing ongoing ticket-based support.What You Will DoCustomer-Driven Product & Platform DevelopmentDesign and build customer-facing enhancements, integrations, and custom workflows that scale across the platform.Translate enterprise customer requirements into durable, reusable platform capabilities.Influence product and engineering roadmaps by identifying patterns across customer needs.Balance short-term customer demands with long-term platform health and architectural integrity.Technical Leadership & OwnershipOwn end-to-end design and implementation of complex, cross-cutting features spanning multiple services or product areas.Drive architectural decisions focused on reliability, performance, extensibility, and maintainability.Partner closely with Product Management, Platform Engineering, and Applied AI teams to deliver solutions aligned with customer outcomes.Enterprise Customer Engineering & EscalationsAct as the primary technical escalation point for the most critical enterprise customer issues across all Eightfold products.Troubleshoot and resolve complex production issues involving distributed systems, large-scale data, and integrations.Work directly with Customer Success, Solutions Engineering, and Support teams to deliver timely, high-quality resolutions.Lead root cause analysis and drive systemic fixes to prevent recurrence.Deep engagement with customer issues, the focus of this role will be on engineering durable solutions, improving platform capabilities, and eliminating entire classes of problems.Mentorship & Engineering ExcellenceMentor and guide junior and mid-level engineers, especially within customer engineering and escalation workflows.Lead design reviews and code reviews with an emphasis on scalability and operational readiness.Establish best practices for observability, debugging, testing, and incident response in customer-facing systems.Qualifications7+ years of professional software engineering experience, including ownership of production systems at scale.Strong backend engineering experience (e.g., Java, Python, Scala, or similar) with distributed systems.Proven experience handling enterprise customer escalations and complex production issues.Deep understanding of system design, APIs, data pipelines, and service-oriented or microservices architectures.Ability to operate effectively in ambiguous environments with competing customer and platform priorities.Demonstrated experience mentoring engineers and influencing technical direction across teams.Hands-on experience building frontend applications with React, Angular, and related UI frameworksStrong communication skills.Preferred QualificationsExperience in Customer Engineering and/or Solutions Engineering, within a SaaS company.Familiarity with enterprise integrations, data ingestion pipelines, and customer-specific configurations.Experience working with cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and production monitoring tools.Exposure to AI/ML-enabled platforms or data-intensive products.Why Join Eightfold.aiMake a direct impact on some of the world’s largest enterprise customers.Solve highly complex, real-world technical problems with visibility across the entire platform.Operate as a fechnical leader with significant ownership and influence.Work closely with customers, product leaders, and engineering teams to shape the future of the Eightfold platform.Pay TransparencyPlease note this role is categorized as onsite or hybrid in Santa Clara, CA The base salary ranges below are provided for pay transparency. Base pay is only one piece of our total compensation package as this role is eligible for bonus and equity awards. Compensation varies depending on a number of factors including qualifications, skills, competencies, experience and zones which are determined by location. Zone A is SF Bay Area, CA .Zone A Base annual salary range: $170,00 to $227,000 + discretionary annual bonus up to `15% + pre-IPO equity (stock options).Hybrid Work At Eightfold, we believe our best work happens when we collaborate closely, learn from one another, and build together. We follow a hybrid work model that combines flexibility with a strong emphasis on in-person collaboration to foster innovation, culture, and rapid execution.Employees based near our Santa Clara, CA office are expected to in the office 3 days per week, as we believe regular in-person engagement is essential to how we build high-impact products and strong teams.Eightfold.ai provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, or disability. Experience our comprehensive benefits with family medical, vision and dental coverage, a competitive base salary, and eligibility for equity awards and discretionary bonuses or commissions.#LI-HybridDepartment:Engineering