Manager of Forward AI Deployment

Vantaca+HOAi•Wilmington, NC

56d•Remote

About The Position

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 Overview 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'll be accountable for deployment predictability, quality, and the enablement systems that make our team faster and more consistent over time.

Requirements

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 multiple concurrent customer deployments, balancing competing priorities and resource constraints
Strong operational instincts: you build systems and processes, not heroics
Excellent customer-facing communication skills—calm, credible, and direct when managing expectations or navigating delays
Experience building scorecards, dashboards, and reporting cadences that drive accountability without micromanagement
Comfort with ambiguity and fast change; you can create order and predictability in a scaling organization

Nice To Haves

Experience in forward-deployed or professional services organizations is a plus
Background, or demonstrated interest, in property management, community association management, or related industries is a plus

Responsibilities

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

Benefits

Benefits: Medical, Dental, and Vision kick in day one.
Unlimited PTO (with a requirement for employees to take a minimum of one continuous week per year).
401K with Company Match.
Remote Flexible - come to the office when needed.
Great parental leave benefits.
Named on Inc 5000 list of America’s Fastest Growing Private Companies.
Named on Inc 5000 Vet 100 Private Companies list multiple years in a row.
Winner of Coastal Entrepreneur Award, Technology Category.
Active employee-led Culture Committee.
Ongoing industry and professional development trainings available to all employees.
Multiple leaders on the executive committee recognized as 40 under 40 recipients for contributions to business and community.
We’re playing offense to win! Our product market fit and our world-class employees make us the leader in our space. We’re building something cool and people like it here.