Head of Forward Deployed Engineering

Bausch + Lomb is seeking a Head of Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) to turn AI from pilots into production capability across the company. This is a hands-on builder role embedded in manufacturing, supply chain, quality, procurement, engineering and logistics teams, shipping production-ready AI solutions inside real operating environments. You will also lead a small team of FDEs as a player-coach.

Roughly 60-70% of the role is hands-on engineering: building, integrating, testing and hardening solutions to production standards. The rest is process discovery, change management and adoption, and coaching the FDE team.

What you'll do:

• Design, code and deploy AI-enabled solutions (generative AI, agents, ML, workflow automation) that run reliably.
• Integrate with enterprise systems such as SAP and plant, quality and supply chain platforms through APIs and data pipelines.
• Own the path from prototype to production: testing, UAT, security and compliance review, release, monitoring and support.
• Work side by side with plant leaders, planners, buyers and quality teams; run workflow assessments and redesign processes around AI.
• Define adoption and value metrics for every deployment and track them after go-live.
• Coach and mentor FDEs and build reusable patterns, templates, connectors and playbooks.

Requirements: 10+ years in software engineering or solution implementation with a strong record of shipping production code; Python and API/integration development on Azure or Google Cloud; hands-on production experience with generative AI, agents, ML and workflow automation; experience leading engineers while remaining an active contributor.