Forward Deployed Engineer · Who is hiring
Companies hiring Forward Deployed Engineers
Databricks, Palantir and Salesforce post the most Forward Deployed Engineer jobs: 122, 100 and 88 open roles in Rung’s November 2026 census, 79% of the 394 it tracks. OpenAI follows with 39. Google Cloud, Anthropic and Meta also hire for the title but sit outside that census. About 43% of the counted roles are in the US and roughly one in five is remote-friendly.
Which companies have the most FDE openings?
The census covers 13 companies. The six largest employers hold 378 of the 394 roles; Writer, Modal, Baseten, Sardine, Ramp, GitLab and Datadog have one to three openings each.
| Company | Open roles | Titles used | What the FDE builds |
|---|---|---|---|
| Databricks | 122 | Forward Deployed Engineer, Sr. Forward Deployed Engineer (some listed as Solutions Architect, Forward Deployed Engineer) | Builds customer data and AI workloads on the Databricks platform, often in industry-specific teams such as media and games. |
| Palantir | 100 | Forward Deployed Software Engineer, Deployment Strategist | The original model. Engineers embed on Foundry and AIP programs for commercial and government customers, paired with a Deployment Strategist who owns the problem definition. Hires new graduates into the track. |
| Salesforce | 88 | Agentforce Forward Deployed Engineer, Forward Deployed Engineering Lead | Deploys Agentforce agents and Data Cloud into customer orgs. The postings span all levels, from engineer to manager. |
| OpenAI | 39 | Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) | Takes frontier-model deployments from discovery to production at strategic enterprise and government customers, with Life Sciences, Semiconductor and Government variants. |
| Scale AI | 16 | Forward Deployed Engineer | Enterprise and public-sector AI programs built on Scale’s data and evaluation stack. |
| Cohere | 13 | Forward Deployed Engineer, Infrastructure Specialist; Forward Deployed Engineer, Agentic Platform | Stands up Cohere’s models and agent platform inside customer infrastructure, with regional teams for North America, Europe, the Middle East and Korea. |
Read the titles column before the counts. Palantir splits the work between the engineer and a Deployment Strategist, and 64 of the census roles carry that strategist title rather than “engineer”. If you are comparing offers, compare who owns the customer relationship, not just what the role is called.
Which AI labs hire Forward Deployed Engineers?
All of the large ones, under slightly different scopes:
- OpenAI runs the biggest lab program: 39 open roles in the census, posted across San Francisco, New York, Paris, Tokyo, Seoul, Singapore, Sydney and Abu Dhabi.
- Anthropic posts Forward Deployed Engineer, Applied AI, a Federal Civilian variant, a Custom Agents variant and a Head of Forward Deployed Engineering role. Some postings call the same job Applied AI Engineer.
- Google Cloud posts the title across Generative AI, Applied AI and Developer AI, from Forward Deployed Engineer I up to Staff, plus a Partner FDE role that works through Google’s consulting partners.
- Meta hires Forward Deployed Engineer, Enterprise AI to integrate Llama into enterprise partners’ products.
- Cohere and Scale AI are in the census above; ByteDance’s BytePlus has posted the role in Singapore.
The pattern across all of them: the lab sells model access, and the FDE is the person who turns that access into a system the customer will pay to keep running. For the role itself, start with what a Forward Deployed Engineer does.
Where are Forward Deployed Engineer jobs located?
The US has 171 of the 394 counted roles. The rest are spread thinly:
| Country | Open roles |
|---|---|
| United States | 171 |
| United Kingdom | 42 |
| France | 12 |
| South Korea · Japan · Canada | 11 each |
| India | 9 |
| Singapore | 8 |
| Australia | 7 |
| Germany | 6 |
Germany’s six roles look small against the UK’s 42. The likely mechanism is where the customers’ AI programs are run from: many of these vendors run European sales from London, and an FDE is hired where the customer team sits.
What do FDE job postings ask for?
Of the 306 descriptions Rung could read in full:
- 99% stress customer-facing work and 81% mention travel or on-site time.
- 77% ask for Python, 59% for JavaScript or TypeScript, 51% for data and SQL pipelines.
- 64% want API and integration experience; 63% want a major cloud.
- 33% name LLMs or generative AI explicitly; 27% mention a security clearance.
Only a third naming LLMs is the useful number. The labs assume you can learn their model in a week; they cannot teach you in a week to run a discovery session or get a system through a bank’s architecture review. Those are the skills The Forward Deployed Playbook works through one episode at a time.
What do these companies pay Forward Deployed Engineers?
Only 32 US postings in the census disclosed a band. The median band was $185K to $300K base, and the top was $445K plus equity. For company-level pay data, see the Palantir, OpenAI and Databricks salary guides.
Sources: Rung, Forward Deployed Engineer jobs census (data pulled November 2026; counts, locations, skills and pay bands) · company career pages and public job listings for Anthropic, Google Cloud, Meta, Salesforce, Databricks, Cohere and Palantir, checked 8 November 2026. Counts move weekly; treat them as a snapshot.
Forward Deployed Engineer jobs: common questions
Which company hires the most Forward Deployed Engineers?
Databricks, with 122 open roles in Rung’s November 2026 census, followed by Palantir with 100 and Salesforce with 88. Those three hold 79% of the 394 roles the census tracks.
Does Google hire Forward Deployed Engineers?
Yes. Google Cloud posts the title across Generative AI, Applied AI and Developer AI teams, at levels from Forward Deployed Engineer I to Staff, plus a Partner Forward Deployed Engineer role and language-specific variants for Japanese and Mandarin markets. Google is not one of the 13 companies in Rung’s census, so its openings come on top of the 394.
Are Forward Deployed Engineer jobs remote?
Rarely fully. About 20% of the roles in Rung’s census are flagged remote-friendly, and 81% of the descriptions mention travel or on-site work. The job is defined by sitting with the customer, so expect to travel even when your home base is flexible.
Do Forward Deployed Engineer roles need a security clearance?
About 27% of the descriptions Rung analysed mention a clearance. Those cluster in government work: Palantir’s US Government track, OpenAI’s Government variant and Anthropic’s Federal Civilian role. Commercial roles at the same companies usually do not require one.
