Deployment Strategist Lead

About the Company

Valon is building the AI-native operating system for regulated finance, starting with mortgage servicing.

We're a Series C company backed by a16z, transforming industries that others have written off as too complex to innovate.

Rather than build on top of broken legacy systems, we took a different approach: we built and operate our own mortgage servicing business managing $110+ billion in loans. This wasn't the end goal, it was how we deeply understood the complexity needed to build software that actually works in regulated industries.

The results speak for themselves. We've transformed mortgage servicing from a 0% margin business into 60%+ margins while dramatically improving customer experience. Major enterprise contracts are now deploying across the industry.

Valon

OS is our unified platform that makes every process structured and programmable and it is perfectly positioned for the AI era. When everything flows through one system with rich data, AI agents don't just automate tasks, they continuously improve entire operations. Mortgage servicing is just the beginning of our vision to transform regulated industries and beyond.

• Lead major enterprise deployments: Drive complex, high‑stakes rollouts on time and in budget, with clear success metrics tied to operational and financial outcomes.

• Orchestrate cross‑functional strike teams: Coordinate Deployment Strategy (DS), Forward‑Deployed Engineers, Engineering, Product, and Analytics from discovery through migration, UAT, cutover, and post‑go‑live stabilization.

• Codify the playbook: Build reusable accelerators such as migration frameworks, QA protocols, change‑management templates, and stakeholder comms that improve speed and quality across deployments.

• Be the voice of the customer: Synthesize field signals into crisp product requirements, shape the R&D roadmap, and close the loop by validating that shipped capabilities deliver measurable customer value.

• Manage risk with precision: Surface critical path, anticipate blockers in messy legacy environments, and implement mitigation plans that keep delivery on track.

• Drive continuous value creation: After go‑live, lead iterative workflow redesign and AI agent introduction to expand impact quarter over quarter.

• Lead cross‑functional teams: Set direction and standards for the deployment team you’re staffed with (DS, FDEs, engineers, product, analytics) through influence and operating cadence. Team structure may evolve over time, including potential line‑management scope.

• Own the engagement end‑to‑end: Act as deal/case lead across scope, SOWs, change orders, timelines, risk, budget, and value tracking. Maintain single‑threaded ownership from discovery to steady state.

• Run executive steering and stakeholder comms: Drive cadence with customer senior leadership, align on objectives and success metrics, and ensure rapid decision‑making.

• Lead staffing and throughput: Define needed skills and capacity, request and onboard team members, set ways of working, and unblock execution. Scope may evolve over time based on business needs.

• Seamless end‑to‑end delivery; discovery to migration to cutover to steady state executed without disruption to business operations.

• Data migration completed with validated reconciliations and zero critical defects at go‑live; clear backfill and rollback plans documented and unused.

• Infrastructure stood up and hardened; environments, access, observability, and runbooks in place prior to UAT; no Sev‑1 incidents during cutover window.

• Training and enablement landed; target user cohorts trained, adoption thresholds met, and support model transitioned to steady state.

• Measurable business outcomes achieved; baseline established pre‑deployment and agreed deltas realized post‑go‑live.

• Scope, timeline, and budget held or change‑controlled with clear decision logs; risks identified early and burned down proactively.

• Executive trust earned: steering forums run to cadence, issues surfaced early with options, and stakeholders rate the program as seamless and well‑managed.

• 5+ years leading complex enterprise implementations or transformations in…