Senior Forward Deployed Engineer -Industrial AI

Senior Forward Deployed Engineer - Industrial AI

The FDE Company by Devoteam Location: Paris-based, deployed at industrial client sites, mostly in France · Contract: CDI, full-time · Level: Senior (5+ years) Compensation: €80,000 - €100,000 fixed base per year, plus an annual bonus on team and individual objectives.

Industrial AI that delivers what it promises: measured in euros on the client's P&L, not in slides.

The FDE Company is Devoteam's Forward Deployed Engineering practice, built with OSS Ventures. We deploy vertical AI software in factories, warehouses and supply chains, and we stay until it produces measurable, recurring gains. At senior level you do not just execute the last mile: you own the account and set the standard for how deployments run.

What you'll do

• Own the deployment end to end for one or several client accounts: configuration, integration, data pipelines and the custom code no product ships with, built with your own hands and with AI coding tools.
• Talk strategy with the client's leadership: frame each scope as a business case in euros, agree how it is measured, get finance to sign off.
• Extract the data that does not exist yet: interview the planner, sit with the operator, turn tribal knowledge into structured data.
• Run the deployment like a professional: weekly steering, clear status, risks surfaced early. Coach junior FDEs to do the same.
• Spot the next opportunity inside the account and build the business case for it yourself.

Your profile

Senior, entrepreneurial, hands-on. We care less about your title than about what you have actually built, shipped and owned.

Must-haves:

• You build and ship. You have shipped production code with your own hands, and you still do. Name the repo, the stack, what broke. We will ask you to show it, or to build something live with Claude Code.
• You are an entrepreneur or a strategist. You have founded or co-founded a company (successful or not), or you have led strategy or digital-transformation engagements with C-level clients: you made the call, and you can show the result in numbers.
• You build with AI. LLM apps, agents, evals, AI coding assistants: in practice, not in theory.
• You decompose ambiguous problems and turn them into a business case a CFO accepts. It is the most tested skill in our process.
• You hold the room. With a skeptical plant manager or an executive committee, you disagree when you must and say "I don't know" without losing the room.
• You want the field. 2 to 3 days a week at client sites, mostly in France, occasionally abroad.
• Professional French and English: a workshop with a plant manager, a standup with an English-speaking stakeholder.

Nice-to-haves: industrial, operations or supply-chain experience, a P&L or client relationship you owned, a quantitative backbone, frontend basics (React/TypeScript), experience coaching engineers. An interest in the humanities is welcome.

Career path

Senior FDE (owns one or several accounts) → Lead FDE (owns a portfolio of deployments and a team). Scope is earned by what your deployments do for clients' P&L.

Working conditions

You start with the FDE Academy: a paid three-week programme leading to the FDE Foundation certification by Devoteam Academy and OSS Ventures. Paris base; during active deployments expect 40 to 60 % of your time at client sites. Health cover, meal vouchers [TBC - relocation allowance if moving to Paris].

Our process

1. A 30-minute call with our recruiter.
2. A 60-minute interview: your code or a live build, a venture or engagement you led, and a business case.
3. A meeting with the practice leadership.

This role is probably not for you if you want pure engineering with no client in the room, you need certainty about next month, you are more comfortable describing a solution than shipping one, travel is a dealbreaker, or you need a mandate before you build.

Our values: Impact, not reports · Ship in weeks · The floor is the truth · Ownership without borders · Humility as a method.

We look for profiles with clear, standout strengths, not ones that just check every box a little.