Principal Forward Deployment Engineer

Principal Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE)

This role is Office/Field Based, Hyderabad Office

We are seeking an accomplished Principal Forward Deployed Engineer to serve as the critical bridge between Cornerstone's product engineering teams and our most strategic enterprise customers. As a principal-level FDE, you will own end-to-end technical engagements, drive successful deployments of AI-powered Workforce Agility products, and translate complex customer needs into product innovations.

In this role you will...

• Lead technical deployments and integrations of Cornerstone's AI-native Workforce Agility products at strategic enterprise accounts, ensuring high-impact, successful outcomes.
• Act as the primary technical authority in customer engagements - owning solution architecture, implementation strategy, and long-term adoption planning.
• Partner directly with customers to deeply understand their workforce challenges, then design and deliver tailored AI-driven solutions leveraging Generative AI and Agentic Frameworks.
• Translate field learnings into actionable product feedback, influencing roadmap decisions by collaborating closely with Product, Engineering, and AI teams.
• Build and maintain reference architectures, integration patterns, and deployment playbooks that scale best practices across the FDE organization.
• Mentor and technically guide junior FDEs, establishing standards for customer delivery, technical discovery, and solution design.
• Present technical vision and deployment strategies to C-suite and senior stakeholders, building confidence and driving executive alignment.
• Identify and prototype custom solutions - including scripts, APIs, and AI workflow extensions - that accelerate customer time-to-value.
• Stay current with enterprise integration technologies, AI advancements, and industry trends to continuously elevate customer engagements.

• Bachelor's or Master's in Computer Science, Engineering, or a closely related field (or equivalent experience in senior enterprise technical roles).
• 6+ years of hands-on experience in enterprise software deployment, systems integration, or solutions engineering - with strong proficiency in Python, Java, or equivalent.
• 1-2 years of experience deploying or integrating products built on Generative AI, LLMs, or Agentic Frameworks in production enterprise environments.
• Deep familiarity with AI/ML concepts (NLP, recommendation systems, LLMs) sufficient to architect AI-native solutions and communicate technical trade-offs to customers
• Proven track record of owning complex, multi-stakeholder enterprise deployments from discovery through go-live and value realization.
• Experience with Agentic systems and familiarity with A2A (Agent-to-Agent) and MCP (Model Context Protocol) patterns in customer-facing contexts.
• Strong understanding of enterprise integration patterns - REST APIs, event-driven architectures, SSO/identity, HRIS/HCM systems (Workday, SAP SuccessFactors, etc.).
• Exceptional communication and executive presence: equally fluent explaining architecture to engineers and articulating business value to CHROs and CTOs.
• Outstanding problem-solving instincts - able to diagnose ambiguous customer environments quickly and drive toward solutions under pressure.
• Leadership qualities that inspire trust with customers and cross-functional internal teams alike.