Internal Principal FDE
- Onsite
- FullTime
- Management
About the role
Internal Principal FDE
At Phrase, we help open the door to global business by providing the world's leading Language Intelligence Platform.
The Phrase Platform combines AI, agentic orchestration, and a headless, API-first architecture in one composable system. Beyond translation, it orchestrates and adapts content to culture, audience, channel, brand voice, and intended outcome in any language, for every audience. It applies the context that makes content perform in every market: quality standards, glossaries, prior translations, and cultural nuance. Every team, in every region, can ship content that is on-brand, on-point, and ready for any audience.
Phrase gives enterprises the intelligence to automate workflows, the freedom to connect their own tools and engines, and the control to govern global content at scale.
With a global team based in our offices, and remote colleagues across Europe, the UK, the US, and the APAC region, Phrase offers an international environment built on collaboration, innovation, and shared purpose.
Phrase has moved fast on AI internally — a platform team built Launchpad, our internal AI app infrastructure, champions across the company are building tools for their own teams, and our CEO has personally pushed the boundary on what AI can do for how we operate. What's missing is one person who owns the whole picture: what to build, what to buy, who adopts it, and whether it actually made the boat go faster. Adoption is uneven, good tools stay local to the team that built them, and complex cross-functional systems — CPQ being the clearest example — have no owner with the mandate and resources to deliver them. This role owns that picture. You'll work with business owners across Sales, Customer Success, Marketing, Finance, People, Legal, and Operations to understand their needs and bring the latest approaches and technologies to meet them, while the business itself remains ultimately responsible for adoption.
This isn't a purely internal-consulting or strategy role — you ship, prototyping through to production rather than just advising. And it isn't ownership of AI inside the Phrase product itself; that stays with Product and Engineering.
What you'll be responsible for:
• Push the boundary on what's possible with AI agents, automation, and internal tooling, and translate it into concrete opportunities for a 240-person B2B software company.
• Prototype and build through to production yourself, not just advise on what's possible.
• Drive AI tooling adoption across Sales, Customer Success, Marketing, Finance, People, Legal, and Operations — engineering adoption is owned by engineering, everywhere else is yours.
• Learn how work actually flows in each function, find the highest-leverage points, and get tools into daily use, measuring success by changed behaviour and cycle time rather than apps shipped.
• Own complex cross-functional builds such as CPQ end-to-end: gathering functional requirements from the business, sequencing the work, and drawing on build capacity from champions across the company and the platform team where needed.
• Run disciplined build-versus-buy evaluations of external AI systems before committing significant engineering time and tokens, owning the framework, the vendor conversations, and the recommendation — including recommending "buy" when it's right.
• Chair a virtual AI and automation governance team covering tiering, approvals, data classification, and the Launchpad review process.
• Keep the safe path the fast path — govern without adding bureaucracy or unnecessary gates.
What you need:
• 8+ years in roles combining technology and business operations — internal tools product management, business systems leadership, senior Forward-Deployed Engineer, RevOps/BizOps with a strong technical bent, or engineering leadership that moved toward the business.
• Hands-on credibility with engineers: you've shipped software, you read code, you can evaluate an architecture decision, and you've built things yourself with LLM APIs and agent frameworks.
• Demonstrated experience driving adoption of new tools or processes across non-technical functions, with evidence of measured outcomes.
• Experience owning or delivering at least one complex cross-functional system (CPQ, ERP, billing, revenue platform, or similar), whether built or bought.
• A track record of rigorous build-versus-buy or vendor evaluation decisions, including at least one where you argued against your own team's preference.
• Commercial fluency — you think in revenue, margin, cycle time, and second-order effects, and can hold your own with a CFO and a CRO.
• Direct, low-ego communication: you give hard feedback, take it well, and write clearly.
• Direct people leadership of engineers or technical staff (desirable, not required).
How we'll measure success in your first 12 months:
• Adoption — weekly active use of internal AI tools across non-engineering functions, with documented cycle-time reductions.
• Cross-functional delivery — e.g. CPQ live and in use by Sales and Finance, whether built or bought.
• Build vs. buy — a working evaluation framework in place.
• Platform — Launchpad review gates owned and cleared on a defined SLA, with no app stalled in review.
• Integration — AI connected into the core systems people already use (CRM, ticketing, finance, collaboration), with measurable use inside those tools rather than in standalone apps.
What you'll get:
- Work experience in a successful and growing global SaaS company
- Be part of an international team in Europe, APAC, and the Americas
- Expert colleagues in their field who are determined to build the best localization platform on the market, creating a world where language never limits opportunity
- An agile work environment, where it is encouraged to take smart risks
- Take part in a culture full of trust, support and loyalty, where respectful and open feedback is valued, and diversity is fully embraced
- A positive, open-minded, and innovative atmosphere
- Support in your professional development and personal career goals
What's on top:
- 4 Company holidays additional to your regular holidays (1 day per quarter where the entire company is off to celebrate our achievements).
- In addition, the company also provides employees with a Christmas break to allow you to spend time with family and friends without use of your vacation allocation.
- Your birthday is off because it is important to celebrate you as well.
- 2 Giveback days where you can support the local community, volunteer, and/or participate in charity events and activities.
- Professional and extensive onboarding.
- Enterprise Claude Licence
- Additional local benefits depending on the entity you're hired at, just ask your Talent Acquisition Partner
Phrase is committed to ensuring equal pay for equal work and work of equal value between women and men. Our aim is that our workforce will be truly representative of all sections of society and that each worker feels respected and able to give their best. The job requirements and salary range for this job have been established through a gender-neutral job evaluation and classification process. This process objectively assesses the skills, responsibility, effort and working conditions required for each job. This systematic approach ensures fair pay regardless of who performs the work. We welcome applications from all qualified candidates regardless of their sex, race or ethnicity, disability, religion/belief, sexual orientation, gender identity or age. We value and welcome different perspectives, experiences and backgrounds as we believe that these differences make our team even stronger on our mission of opening the door to global business by giving everybody access to the content they need in the language they speak.
Description as published by Phrase.