Director, Cluster Forward Deployment Engineering Data Center GPU
AMD · Santa Clara
ADVANCE YOUR CAREER. ADVANCE THE WORLD.
At AMD, we believe technology has the power to solve the world’s most important challenges. From advancing healthcare and scientific discovery to powering AI and the technologies people rely on every day, innovation at AMD is shaping the future.
Whether you’re designing next-gen processors, enabling AI breakthroughs, or bringing leading edge products to market, every role at AMD contributes to something bigger — technology that moves the world forward. Join us and, together, we’ll advance your career.
THE ROLE:
We are seeking a Director, Cluster Forward Deployment Engineering to lead AMD's customer-embedded engineering engagements across strategic customers, cloud service provider, hyperscale, and AI infrastructure accounts. This executive leadership role will build and lead a team of Forward Deployed Engineers who work directly with customer engineering organizations to deploy, integrate, optimize, and scale AMD datacenter GPU platforms and software solutions.
The Director will own the technical engagement model across a portfolio of customers, guiding deployments from early architecture and proof-of-concept through cluster bring-up, workload enablement, production readiness, and operational scale. This role will drive alignment across customer engineering teams and AMD Software, Hardware, Product Management, Business Development, Operations, and Support organizations to resolve deployment barriers, accelerate time-to-value, and translate field experience into product and platform improvements.
THE PERSON:
The ideal candidate is an experienced customer-facing engineering executive with a strong track record building and leading teams that deploy complex AI, cloud, or datacenter technologies directly within customer environments. They combine deep technical understanding of GPU-based computing, distributed systems, AI software stacks, and production infrastructure with strong organizational leadership, executive communication, and customer relationship skills.
They thrive in ambiguous and fast-moving environments, build credibility with customer executives and hands-on engineering teams alike, and lead through influence across large cross-functional organizations. They can balance immediate customer deployment needs with scalable engineering practices, while using real-world customer experience to improve AMD products, software, support models, and future platform strategies.
KEY RESPONSIBILITES:
- Lead and develop a globally distributed team of Forward Deployed Engineers supporting AMD's strategic customers, cloud service provider, hyperscale, and AI infrastructure customers.
- Own the technical engagement strategy for assigned Mega Data Center and Cloud Service Provider accounts, aligning engineering resources to customer architecture, deployment priorities, workload requirements, and production milestones.
- Partner with internal and external stakeholders, drive end-to-end customer deployment execution from discovery, architecture definition, and proof-of-concept through cluster bring-up, software integration, workload enablement, performance optimization, production readiness, and operational scale.
- Build trusted relationships with customer engineering leaders, architects, platform teams, and executive stakeholders, serving as the senior technical escalation and coordination point for business-critical deployments.
- Lead resolution of complex, cross-stack issues spanning GPU hardware, firmware, ROCm software, AI frameworks, networking, storage, cluster management, orchestration, reliability, and workload performance.
- Partner with Product Management, Business Development, Pre-sales, Operations, and Support teams to deliver customer commitments and maintain clear ownership of technical risks, dependencies, and mitigation plans.
- Serve as the voice of the customer within AMD, converting deployment friction, feature gaps, and emerging workload requirements into actionable product feedback and roadmap priorities.
- Develop reusable deployment patterns, reference architectures, automation, technical playbooks, readiness criteria, and operating mechanisms that improve execution consistency across accounts.
- Define and track engineering and customer success metrics, including time-to-deployment, production readiness, workload enablement, performance, utilization, reliability, issue-resolution effectiveness, and expansion readiness.
- Lead executive deployment reviews and technical health assessments, clearly communicating customer status, engineering risks, decisions, dependencies, and recovery plans.
- Scale the Cluster FDE operating model through workforce planning, talent development, technical mentorship, account coverage models, and strong collaboration with regional and centralized engineering teams.
PREFERRED EXPERIENCE:
- Proven track record in customer-facing engineering, forward deployed engineering, solutions architecture, software engineering, systems engineering, or technical leadership roles supporting complex datacenter or cloud environments.
- Proven success leading and scaling engineering teams responsible for customer deployment, technical integration, production adoption, or operational enablement.
- Demonstrated experience working directly with MDC providers, cloud service providers, hyperscalers, AI infrastructure companies, OEMs, ODMs, and enterprise customers.
- Deep understanding of large-scale GPU deployments, AI training and inference environments, distributed systems, datacenter operations, server architecture, networking, storage, Linux, Kubernetes, containers, and performance optimization.
- Proven ability to lead complex customer deployments from proof-of-concept through production scale while managing technical risk, cross-functional dependencies, and executive expectations.
- Demonstrated ability to translate customer deployment experience into engineering priorities, product improvements, reusable solutions, and roadmap recommendations.
- Strong executive presence with experience influencing customer and internal leadership teams across engineering, product, operations, support, and commercial organizations.
- Exceptional written, verbal, technical, and executive communication skills.
ACADEMIC CREDENTIALS:
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or related technical field; advanced degree preferred.
Solid years of relevant experience in engineering leadership, software engineering, solutions architecture, customer engineering, forward deployed engineering, technical program management, or related technical leadership roles.
This role is not eligible for visa sponsorship.
#LI-EV1
Benefits offered are described: AMD benefits at a glance.
AMD does not accept unsolicited resumes from headhunters, recruitment agencies, or fee-based recruitment services. AMD and its subsidiaries are equal opportunity, inclusive employers and will consider all applicants without regard to age, ancestry, color, marital status, medical condition, mental or physical disability, national origin, race, religion, political and/or third-party affiliation, sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. We encourage applications from all qualified candidates and will accommodate applicants’ needs under the respective laws throughout all stages of the recruitment and selection process.
AMD may use Artificial Intelligence to help screen, assess or select applicants for this position. AMD’s “Responsible AI Policy” is available here.
This posting is for an existing vacancy.
Benefits offered are described: AMD benefits at a glance.
AMD does not accept unsolicited resumes from headhunters, recruitment agencies, or fee-based recruitment services. AMD and its subsidiaries are equal opportunity, inclusive employers and will consider all applicants without regard to age, ancestry, color, marital status, medical condition, mental or physical disability, national origin, race, religion, political and/or third-party affiliation, sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. We encourage applications from all qualified candidates and will accommodate applicants’ needs under the respective laws throughout all stages of the recruitment and selection process.
AMD may use Artificial Intelligence to help screen, assess or select applicants for this position. AMD’s “Responsible AI Policy” is available here.
This posting is for an existing vacancy.
More jobs at AMD · Infrastructure & IT jobs in Santa Clara, CA