Engagement Manager, Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE)

Why SailPoint?

Love what you do. And love where you do it. Smart people, fun culture, innovative work, beautiful offices — oh, and everyone’s really nice. That’s what people say about SailPoint. We’re known as the company where everyone wants to work, and we have the awards to prove it. If you’re passionate about outsmarting cybercriminals and working at a company where you can truly have an impact, and we want you to join our team. 

 

SailPoint empowers the largest, most complex organizations by putting identity at the Center of Security and IT.  Our 2,000+ customers include global financial institutions, government entities, and pharmaceutical organizations and more.

 

Who You Are:

You are a self-directed, highly motivated, and experienced professional that thrives while overseeing multiple projects and prospective client opportunities. It is easy for you to build and maintain professional working relationships, and you are comfortable interacting with people at all levels within an organization. You possess strong leadership, communication, organizational, and problem-solving skills and can balance both team and individual workloads. You are an exceptional multitasker, with the ability to meet and manage moving deadlines, gauge risks, and creatively resolve unexpected issues that arise. By leveraging your experience, you can identify.

 

Role Summary:

Operating at the intersection of Solution Engineering, Professional Services and Product Management, the Forward Deployed Engineering team (FDEs) leverages state-of-the-art AI tooling alongside deep implementation expertise and industry knowledge to build foundational solutions, solve complex problems, accelerate our customers' time-to-value and decrease the cost of traditional services. 

The Engagement Manager, Forward Deployed Engineering, operates as the programmatic backbone for global modernization and Forward Deployed Engineering initiatives. While acting as an Engagement Manager on key accounts, this role heavily functions as a Program Manager—tasked with designing, standardizing, and maintaining and executing the operational frameworks that allow the team to scale. Reporting to the Director of Forward Deployed Engineering, you will build robust procedures that bridge pre-sales scoping and post-sales delivery, ensuring consistency, governance, and velocity across all global engagements.

 

 

Responsibilities:

Process Engineering & Programmatic Governance

• Design, implement, and maintain standard operating procedures (SOPs) for the end-to-end modernization deal lifecycle.
• Establish programmatic governance over scoping frameworks, ensuring consistency, quality control, and continuous improvement across all global regions.
• Identify operational bottlenecks within the Forward Deployed Engineering team and develop scalable, repeatable processes to resolve them.

Deal Scoping & Pre-Sales Operations

• Oversee and execute global Level of Effort (LOE) estimations, utilizing standardized frameworks to ensure rapid turnaround times and maintain deal velocity.
• Manage and continuously optimize the global scoping calculator, acting as the owner of the tool's underlying logic and programmatic updates.
• Act as a tactical resource and process guide on customer-facing sales calls, seamlessly navigating stakeholders through the modernization pathway.
• Provide feedback based on experience in pre-sales activities to larger FDE team.

Cross-Functional Alignment & SOW Handoffs

• Build and govern the pre-to-post-sales handoff process between the Forward Deployed Engineering team, SailPoint Professional Services (PS), and Partners.
• Standardize how scoping requirements are translated into clear deployment guidelines, technical specifications, and Statements of Work (SOWs) inputs to eliminate ambiguity.
• Serve as the central program liaison for PS and Partners, ensuring adherence to established engagement procedures on active modernization projects.

Enablement Program Management

• Architect and manage a formalized enablement program to drive a regular cadence of knowledge transfer and best-practice sharing for the global Partners, PS and Sales teams.
• Develop repeatable educational playbooks to scale awareness for legacy modernization prospects and net-new Forward Deployed Engineering opportunities.

 

Required Skills & Experience:

• Experience: 5+ years of experience in program management, process engineering, technical pre-sales, or engagement management within the enterprise software space.
• Process Design: Strong proven track record of creating, documenting, and enforcing standard operating procedures (SOPs) and operational frameworks from scratch.
• Scoping & Frameworks: Experience developing programmatic tools, Level of Effort (LOE) calculators, and standardizing Statement of Work (SOW) generation.
• Project & Program Management: Exceptional organizational skills with the ability to manage multiple concurrent deal cycles while simultaneously building long-term operational infrastructure.
• Technical Aptitude: Ability to quickly learn software solutions, deployment methodologies, and modernization concepts to effectively build processes around them (IAM experience is a plus, but deep architectural knowledge is not required).
• Communication: Exceptional ability to drive cross-functional alignment, manage change, and clearly communicate process updates to technical and business stakeholders.

 

 

Success Milestones: What to Expect at 1, 3, and 6 Months

1 Month In: Onboarding, Training, and Discovery

• Complete internal corporate onboarding and integrate with the Forward Deployed Engineering team.
• Complete Product Training: Successfully finish the Identity Security Leader and the Identity Security Administrator (Identity Security Cloud) training paths via SailPoint Identity University, establishing a strong baseline knowledge of Identity Security principles and core platform functionality.
• Shadow the Director on active deal scoping, sales calls, and internal enablement sessions to understand the current pre-sales operational lifecycle.
• Conduct a comprehensive audit of existing LOE calculators, scoping frameworks, and FDE SOPs to identify immediate gaps and process improvement opportunities.

 

3 Months In: Taking Ownership and Establishing Rhythms

• Take over the day-to-day execution of global LOE estimations and scoping for modernization deals, actively maintaining the global scoping calculator.
• Actively participate as a tactical FDE resource on customer-facing sales calls to guide stakeholders through the modernization pathway.
• Draft and implement initial iterations of new standard operating procedures (SOPs) for the pre-sales to post-sales SOW handoff.
• Partner closely with the Senior Project Manager to execute smooth project transitions to the PS and Partner delivery teams.

 

6 Months In: Optimization, Governance, and Scale

• Fully govern the FDE pre-sales scoping lifecycle, operating as the definitive process owner and ensuring consistent, high-quality deliverables globally.
• Architect, launch, and manage the formalized FDE enablement program for the global PS and Sales organizations.
• Autonomously manage cross-functional pre-sales handoffs, significantly reducing the Director's day-to-day tactical involvement in deal scoping.
• Establish a mature, closed-loop feedback mechanism with the Senior Project Manager—using real-world post-sales delivery data to continuously refine and optimize pre-sales scoping calculators and frameworks.

 

Travel: Ability to travel up to 15%

 

Education:
Bachelor’s degree or equivalent work experience.

Benefits and Compensation listed vary based on the location of your employment and the nature of your employment with SailPoint.

As a part of the total compensation package, this role may be eligible for the SailPoint Corporate Bonus Plan or a role-specific commission, along with potential eligibility for equity participation. SailPoint maintains broad salary ranges for its roles to account for variations in knowledge, skills, experience, market conditions and locations, as well as reflect SailPoint’s differing products, industries, and lines of business. Candidates are typically placed into the range based on the preceding factors as well as internal peer equity. We estimate the base salary, for US-based employees, will be in this range from (min-max, USD):

$91,600 - $154,462.00

Base salaries for employees based in other locations are competitive for the employee’s home location.

Benefits Overview

1. Health and wellness coverage: Medical, dental, and vision insurance

2. Disability coverage: Short-term and long-term disability

3. Life protection: Life insurance and Accidental Death & Dismemberment (AD&D)

4. Additional life coverage options: Supplemental life insurance for employees, spouses, and children

5. Flexible spending accounts for health care, and dependent care; limited purpose flexible spending account

6. Financial security: 401(k) Savings and Investment Plan with company matching

7. Time off benefits: Flexible vacation policy

8. Holidays: 8 paid holidays annually

9. Sick leave

10. Parental support: Paid parental leave

11. Employee Assistance Program (EAP) and Care Counselors

12. Voluntary benefits: Legal Assistance, Critical Illness, Accident, Hospital Indemnity and Pet Insurance options

13. Health Savings Account (HSA) with employer contribution

SailPoint is an equal opportunity employer and we welcome all qualified candidates to apply to join our team.  All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, protected veteran status, or any other category protected by applicable law.  

Alternative methods of applying for employment are available to individuals unable to submit an application through this site because of a disability. Contact applicationassistance@sailpoint.com or mail to 11120 Four Points Dr, Suite 100, Austin, TX 78726, to discuss reasonable accommodations.  NOTE: Any unsolicited resumes sent by candidates or agencies to this email will not be considered for current openings at SailPoint.