Forward Deployment Engineer Lead - Manufacturing

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Position Title: Forward Deployment Engineer Lead - Manufacturing

Position Type: Regular - Full-Time ​

Grade: Grade 06

Requisition ID: 44033

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In every role, McCainers are ambitious, curious, and passionate about creating exceptional work experiences - together. With a customer-first mindset, we make doing business with McCain easy.

About the role.

The FDE Manufacturing Lead establishes and maintains the standard of excellence for McCain’s Forward Deployed Engineering practice. Reporting to the VP, Artificial Intelligence, this role leads the development, deployment, and performance of the FDE community supporting McCain’s AI portfolio across Snacking, Manufacturing, Cross-functional, and Data and AI use cases.

This is a hands-on player-coach role. In addition to developing senior practitioners and managing the portfolio FDE pool, you will personally participate in selected AI engagements, helping teams translate complex business needs into scalable solutions and measurable outcomes. You will also partner with the FDEs supporting Commercial, Marketing, and Manufacturing to strengthen standards and practices without managing their day-to-day delivery.

In this hands-on capacity, you will design, build, test, and deploy agentic AI solutions and supporting tools that enable AI agents to reason, orchestrate workflows, interact with enterprise systems and data, and complete defined business tasks. You will help move these solutions from early prototypes into secure, scalable, production-ready capabilities.

What you’ll be doing.

• Personally design, build, test, and deploy agentic AI solutions and reusable tools for selected Manufacturing and enterprise use cases

• Develop AI agents and multi-agent workflows that combine reasoning, orchestration, enterprise data, knowledge sources, APIs, and business systems to execute defined tasks and support measurable business outcomes.

• Build rapid prototypes and production-ready capabilities, working closely with AI Platform and Engineering and Knowledge Engineering to ensure solutions are secure, scalable, observable, maintainable, and aligned with enterprise architecture

• Establish practical engineering patterns for agent evaluation, tool integration, human oversight, monitoring, failure handling, and continuous improvement, and embed those patterns into the broader FDE practice.

• Establish and maintain McCain’s FDE skill standards, role definition, career pathways, and development practices.
• Build and strengthen the FDE community through coaching, mentoring, calibration, and structured feedback.
• Lead hiring, assignment, performance management, and professional development for the portfolio FDE pool.
• Assign FDEs to portfolio clusters based on business priorities, practitioner capabilities, and individual development objectives.
• Personally lead one or two selected portfolio engagements per quarter, modeling the delivery practices and outcome accountability expected across the FDE community.
• Embed alongside FDEs in active use cases to provide in-the-moment coaching and strengthen execution.
• Partner with the FDEs supporting Manufacturing to promote consistent practices and standards while respecting their ownership of delivery.
• Collaborate with AI Platform and Engineering, Knowledge Engineering, AI Deployment and Enablement, and Use Case Governance and Operations leaders to enable effective execution.
• Develop reusable FDE playbooks, engagement patterns, and secondment agreements, including clear accountability for priorities, deliverables, technical craft, and standards.
• Represent the FDE practice with senior functional sponsors and executive leaders, helping resolve resource conflicts and advance business outcomes.
• Improve FDE effectiveness, use-case throughput, solution adoption, and measurable business value across the portfolio.
• Ensure all FDE-led engagements comply with McCain’s security, governance, risk-classification, and Responsible AI standards.

What you’ll need to be successful.

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field. An advanced degree is preferred.
• At least 3 years of experience leading a practice or team of senior individual contributors.

• At least 3 years of experience supporting Manufacturing business functions, including areas such as Manufacturing Operations, Supply Chain, Production Planning, Quality Management, Continuous Improvement, Industrial Engineering, Plant Operations, or Operational Excellence.

• Demonstrated hands-on experience designing, building, and deploying agentic AI solutions, AI agents, or AI-enabled workflow automation in complex business environments

• Experience developing solutions that integrate large language models with enterprise data, knowledge systems, APIs, applications, and business workflows

• Strong understanding of agentic AI engineering patterns, including tool use, orchestration, retrieval-augmented generation, memory and context management, evaluation, observability, guardrails, human-in-the-loop controls, and failure handling.

• Demonstrated ability to operate as a player-coach by delivering personally while developing the capabilities of others.
• Experience establishing and maintaining high standards across a community of senior practitioners.
• Ability to influence senior business sponsors, functional leaders, and engineering leaders without relying solely on formal authority.
• Strong customer focus, executive presence, sound judgment, and comfort operating in ambiguous or rapidly evolving environments.
• A demonstrated record of driving adoption and measurable business impact at scale, beyond technical delivery alone.
• Strong commitment to ethical and responsible AI practices, information security, and enterprise governance.
• Experience in the commercial, consumer packaged goods, food-service, consulting, or AI technology sectors is an asset.
• Familiarity with McCain’s technology environment or experience developing forward-deployed practices within consulting firms or AI-native organizations is an asset.
• Ability to travel to the point of work, including regular engagement with teams in Toronto, Chicago, and Gurgaon.

About the team.

The FDE Manufacturing Lead is part of McCain’s Artificial Intelligence organization and reports to the FDE Practice Manager. This role heavily influences the FDE pool supporting McCain’s AI portfolio, including Manufacturing clusters.

You will work closely with the FDEs supporting Manufacturing, as well as leaders across AI Platform and Engineering, Knowledge Engineering, AI Deployment and Enablement, and Use Case Governance and Operations. The role combines people leadership, practice ownership, executive partnership, and direct participation in selected AI-enabled business engagements.

About McCain.

Click Here to learn more about McCain and how we provide opportunities to make an impact that matters.

Leadership principles.

At McCain, our leadership principles guide how we engage with customers, collaborate as a team, and achieve success. We focus on understanding customer needs, driving innovation, empowering people, and taking ownership to clear obstacles and deliver results.

AI & Digital Capabilities.

At McCain, AI and digital capabilities are part of how we work and innovate. We value curiosity toward emerging technologies and the thoughtful, responsible use of AI-enabled tools to improve outcomes as part of our future-ready culture.

The McCain experience.

We are McCain. This statement is a testament to our collective strength and our individual value. Your contributions play a vital role in our success. Our winning culture is rooted in authenticity and trust, empowering us to bring out the best in one another. Here, you’ll find opportunities to learn, grow, and thrive. Join us and experience why we’re better together.

Our purpose is grounded in building meaningful relationships. We’re big believers in the power of working together in person—it helps us stay connected, collaborate more effectively, and grow as a team. At the same time, we recognize the importance of flexibility. Most office-based roles follow a hybrid model, with the option to work remotely two days a week. There may be exceptions depending on the role and location, so we encourage you to speak with your recruiter for more details.

Compensation Package: $102,700.00 - $137,000.00 . CAD annually + Bonus Eligibility

The above reflects the target compensation range for the position at the time of posting. Hiring compensation will be determined based on experience, skill set, education and training, and other organizational needs. This posting is for an existing vacancy.

Benefits: At McCain, we’re on a mission to create a winning culture that puts employee safety and well-being at the heart of what we do, every day. We understand and appreciate that each person’s needs are unique and ensure our benefits & well-being programs reflect that. Employees are eligible for the following benefits: health coverage (medical, dental, vision, prescription drug), retirement savings benefits, and leave support including medical, family and bereavement. Well-being programs include vacation and holidays, company-supported volunteering time, and mental health resources. Coverages are aligned with applicable law and can vary by work level, location, and nature of the role. Additional benefit detail available during the application process.

Your well-being matters to us, and we’re here to provide you with the necessary resources to support you in being your best self at work — and at home.

McCain Foods is an equal opportunity employer. As a global family-owned company, we strive to be the employer of choice in the diverse communities around the world in which we live and work. We recognize that inclusion drives our creativity, resilience, and success and makes our business stronger. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, religion, color, national origin, sex, age, veteran status, disability, or any other protected characteristic under applicable law.

McCain is an accessible employer. If you require an accommodation throughout the recruitment process (including alternate formats of materials or accessible meeting rooms), please let us know, and we will work with you to find appropriate solutions.

Your privacy is important to us. By submitting personal data or information to us, you agree this will be handled in accordance with McCain’s Global Privacy Policy and Global Employee Privacy Policy, as applicable. McCain leverages AI in the hiring process, though all final decisions are made by humans. You can understand our approach to AI and how your personal information is being handled here.

Job Family: Information Technology
Location(s): CA - Canada : Ontario : Toronto

Company: McCain Foods (Canada)