Forward Deployed Engineering Manager

About Us

Lyrebird Health is transforming the quality and accessibility of healthcare by automating clinicians' most time-consuming tasks. Thousands of clinicians across multiple disciplines use Lyrebird every day in environments where accuracy, safety, and time matter deeply. Everything we build is grounded in earning trust, reducing cognitive load, and delivering meaningful impact at scale.

The Role

Lyrebird is growing fast across the NHS, and we need someone to own the technical reality of that growth. As our Forward Deployed Engineering Manager, you will be accountable for how our product gets deployed, integrated, and run in production across UK healthcare organisations. You will lead a distributed team of Forward Deployed Engineers, hold the technical bar across all UK deployments, and be the person who ensures what gets sold actually shipped; safely, reliably, and in a way that makes the platform stronger. This role sits at the intersection of engineering, delivery, and customer engagement, and covers a growing pipeline of NHS trusts. This role suits an Engineering Leader who has moved into leadership without leaving the technical work behind. You are someone who reads code in unfamiliar codebases without hesitation, spots a bad estimate before the meeting is over, and holds your team to the same standard you hold yourself. You are comfortable in front of NHS trust leadership and equally comfortable pair-debugging an integration issue with one of your Engineers. You do not hide behind process, and you do not accept tech debt as a reason to do something badly.

What You'll Do

• Own the technical architecture and integration standards across all UK deployments, setting the bar for how Lyrebird is implemented in production NHS environments.
• Get into the technical detail when it matters: reviewing integration designs, debugging production issues, challenging implementation approaches, and writing code where needed.
• Lead and develop a team of Forward Deployed Engineers across the UK, including 1-on-1s, career development, and setting clear delivery milestones.
• Translate commercial agreements into rigorous technical implementation plans with defined scope, integration architecture, and success criteria before work begins.
• Drive concurrent deployments across multiple NHS trusts simultaneously, surfacing risks early and maintaining momentum across a growing pipeline.
• Act as the senior technical voice in customer conversations and on-site deployments, including with C-suite and clinical leadership stakeholders.
• Partner with Sales to validate technical feasibility before deals are committed, and escalate systemic product gaps back to the core engineering team.

What You'll Bring

• A strong software engineering background; you have built and operated production systems, and you can still engage at that level when the situation demands it.
• The ability to read unfamiliar codebases, diagnose complex integration problems, and form a credible technical view quickly under pressure.
• Deep experience with API integrations, data flows, and the operational realities of running software in production environments.
• A track record of delivering multiple large, complex technical projects in parallel, with genuine accountability for outcomes.
• Strong communication skills; you give concrete examples from real projects, hold your own at C-level, and know how to move a room without losing the technical thread.
• High agency and low tolerance for ambiguity - you make decisions with incomplete information and escalate problems rather than absorbing them.

Nice to have

• Experience in a forward deployed or embedded engineering role, working directly in customer environments.
• Previous people management experience: leading engineers, running structured 1-on-1s, supporting career growth.
• Experience working in regulated environments such as the NHS, government, or financial services.
• Familiarity with the Forward Deployed Engineering model.

The clinicians who use Lyrebird are doing some of the most important work there is, and they deserve software that works reliably in the places they work. This role exists to make that happen, not in theory, but in production, at scale, across some of the most complex IT environments in the country. The engineering problems are genuinely hard, the impact is genuinely real, and the team you will lead cares about getting it right. We're building a team that reflects the diversity of the people who benefit from our work. We want Lyrebird to be a place where everyone feels safe, supported, and able to thrive. If you're from an underrepresented background in tech, we strongly encourage you to apply, even if you don't meet every requirement.

We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.