Manager of Forward AI Deployement

Manager of Forward AI Deployment

Wilmington, NC | Remote | Full-time

HOAi is a fast-growing startup revolutionizing the community association management industry. Our AI workforce platform integrates machine learning technology to streamline labor-heavy processes, eliminating inefficiencies and driving scalability. With rapid growth in the AI space, we are pushing boundaries to redefine industry standards.

HOAi is the leading AI solution for the community association management industry, enabling organizations to deploy AI Agents that function like experienced managers. These AI Agents go beyond traditional AI by proactively executing complex, multi-step processes with human-like reasoning—working autonomously, 24/7, across your entire operation. This transformation optimizes labor costs, enables growth without additional hires, and ensures faster, higher-quality service for residents and board members.

HOAi was acquired by Vantaca in the fall of 2024. Vantaca just achieved unicorn status with a $1.25B valuation, so it's safe to say we’re past the “scrappy startup phase.” We’re not just building a successful company – we’re building the category-defining platform that will transform how an entire industry operates.

Here’s the reality of our trajectory:

• Growing 100% year-over-year
• Our AI product (HOAi) went from $0 to millions in months
• Backed by Cove Hill Partners and JMI Private Equity
• 6M+ doors on our platform, displacing legacy systems

As the Manager, Forward AI Deployment, you’ll run the deployment "factory" for HOAi—turning signed customers into successful, adopted, renewing customers by orchestrating the work of Forward Deployed Engineers and cross‑functional partners. You will own mission‑critical deployment execution, from capacity planning to go‑live, ensuring that every customer hits their timelines, quality bars, and adoption outcomes. This role is ideal for operational leaders who build systems over heroics, move fast, and create predictable, repeatable processes that scale.

You’ll collaborate across FDE pods, Product, Engineering, and Go‑to‑Market—acting as the connective tissue between customer value and internal execution. You will be accountable for deployment predictability, quality, and the enablement systems that make our team faster and more consistent over time.

• Manage and develop a team of Forward Deployed Engineers ("FDEs"), ensuring they have clear priorities, appropriate workloads, and support needed to deliver for customers
• Own the customer deployment journey from signed contract through successful go‑live and journey to a champion customer
• Run weekly deployment reviews with FDEs; proactively surface slippage, resourcing gaps, and risks before they become customer-facing problems
• Build and maintain an always-current deployment calendar (6–12 weeks out), matching FDE capacity to customer commitments and making tradeoffs explicit
• Coordinate staffing across specialized FDE pods, ensuring the right people are assigned to the right customers based on skills, personality, bandwidth, and customer needs
• Create and maintain deployment playbooks, templates, and checklists that make onboarding repeatable and reduce reliance on tribal knowledge
• Establish clear quality gates and milestone criteria so FDEs and customers know what “ready for go‑live” looks like
• Ensure tight handoffs between GTM//CX, Product//CX and Support//CX, with zero ambiguity on ownership at each stage of the customer journey
• Maintain weekly deployment scorecard for leadership (e.g., on‑time go‑live %, time‑to‑value, FDE utilization, customer health signals)
• Identify patterns in deployment friction and drive fixes into process, training, tooling, or cross-functional asks
• Partner with GTM and Product to set realistic timelines and manage customer expectations throughout the deployment process

• 3–7+ years of experience managing technical teams in implementation, professional services, customer onboarding, or delivery operations—ideally in a high-growth SaaS environment
• Demonstrated track record of developing and retaining high-performing individual contributors
• Proven ability to manage…