What does a forward deployed engineer do?
A forward deployed engineer is a software engineer who works inside a customer's business, finding out what the customer needs and then writing the code that does it. On November 7, 2026, 165 of the 810 companies Hiring Tempo tracks had at least one of these jobs open, 761 in all, which is about 1 in every 100 jobs on their career pages.
Palantir made the title well known, and it has hired "forward deployed software engineers" for years. Its job post for the role in Washington, D.C. says these engineers work directly with customers to understand their biggest problems, then design and build the fix. A normal week can mean a design talk with other engineers, cleaning up a huge pile of data, building a small web app and explaining the result to the customer's bosses. Palantir compares the job to being the CTO of a small startup, because the teams are small and nobody checks in on them much.
You'll also see the job called FDE, or forward deployed software engineer. Some companies split the work in two: the engineer writes the code, and a "deployment strategist" handles the plan and the people. Of the 761 open jobs, 573 are engineer jobs, 108 are for managers and team leads, and 15 are strategist jobs.
A forward deployed engineer is different from a sales engineer, though the two get mixed up. A sales engineer mostly shows a product to people who haven't bought it yet. A forward deployed engineer usually works with customers who already bought it, and the job is to make it work for them by shipping real code.
Who is hiring forward deployed engineers?
Databricks has the most openings by far, with 119. Palantir is second with 73, then Salesforce with 64 and OpenAI with 37. After those four the numbers drop fast, and most of the 165 companies have between one and five openings.
| Company | Open FDE jobs |
|---|---|
| Databricks | 119 |
| Palantir | 73 |
| Salesforce | 64 |
| OpenAI | 37 |
| Rogo | 18 |
| HappyRobot | 17 |
| Scale AI | 14 |
| Cohere | 13 |
| Anduril | 12 |
| Cognition | 11 |
| Mistral AI | 11 |
Source: Hiring Tempo, open jobs on company career pages, November 7, 2026. Counts jobs with "forward deployed" or "FDE" in the title.
Most of these companies sell AI or data software to big businesses and governments. That fits the job, because software like that rarely works the day it's switched on. Someone has to connect it to the customer's data and change it for how the customer works, and that person is the FDE.
It also isn't only AI startups. Defense companies that make drones and robot boats, like Anduril (12), Saronic (9) and Shield AI (4), are hiring them too, and older software companies like ServiceNow, Workday and Adobe each have between 7 and 10 openings.
Is the number of FDE jobs growing?
Yes, at about twice the pace of other jobs, though the rise is smaller than you might guess from how often the title comes up. We've tracked 225 of these companies every day since September 12, 2026. At those same 225 companies, forward deployed jobs went from 306 to 356 between September 12 and November 7, a rise of 16%. All open jobs at those companies grew 8% over the same weeks, so FDE jobs grew about twice as fast as everything else.
Most of that came from one company. Databricks had 58 forward deployed jobs on September 12 and 116 two weeks later. It has been between 116 and 121 in every check we've made since then, so it looks like a real hiring push rather than a change to how its careers site lists jobs. Cognition, the company behind the coding tool Devin, went from none to 11, and Harvey, which makes AI software for lawyers, went from none to 4.
Not every company is adding them. At ElevenLabs the count went from 19 to 4 over the same weeks, and at Cohere from 20 to 13. A shorter list can mean the jobs were filled, so we don't read that as cuts.
Our numbers count job postings, not hires. One posting can cover several openings, and a company can list 20 jobs and fill five. The count also only covers the companies we follow, which lean toward tech, so it can't tell you how many forward deployed engineers work in the US overall.
How much do forward deployed engineers make?
The typical forward deployed engineer job that lists pay offers about $238,500 a year, measured at the middle of the posted range. We found 96 engineer postings with a yearly pay range in US dollars. The middle half of them fell between about $198,000 and $250,000.
That's close to what the same companies pay software engineers. The 730 US software engineer postings with pay ranges on our board have a typical midpoint of $243,750, so moving into an FDE job is not a pay cut, and not a big raise either. OpenAI has 19 of the 96 postings, and its ranges are high, but leaving it out only lowers the typical midpoint to $230,000.
| Company | Posted yearly range | Postings |
|---|---|---|
| OpenAI | $145,800 to $445,000 | 24 |
| Snowflake | $200,000 to $437,000 | 4 |
| Cohere | $240,000 to $415,000 | 1 |
| Harvey | $254,600 to $350,000 | 3 |
| Ramp | $168,000 to $330,000 | 2 |
| Replit | $180,000 to $300,000 | 1 |
| Middesk | $148,000 to $255,000 | 1 |
| Palantir (US Government, Washington, D.C.) | $135,000 to $200,000 | 1 |
Source: pay ranges posted by each company, as collected by Hiring Tempo on November 7, 2026. Palantir's range is from its own job post. Ranges are base pay. Stock and bonuses are extra and not shown.
The ranges are wide because one posting often covers several levels. OpenAI's lowest number and its highest are for different jobs, and a range like $100,000 to $400,000 at Giga covers two levels in one posting. Base pay is also only part of it. Palantir's post says stock and a sign-on bonus can come on top of its range.
Where are forward deployed engineer jobs?
New York City has the most, with 126, and San Francisco has 107. London (62), Washington, D.C. (47) and Chicago (23) come next. Washington is high mostly because of Palantir, which has 22 of the 47 jobs there, and many of its government jobs ask for a Top Secret security clearance or the willingness to get one.
435 of the 761 jobs are in the US. Only 95 are remote, which is 12%, almost the same as the 13% share for all jobs on our board. Many posts say you'll be on site with customers, so expect travel even when the job has a home office. Palantir's new grad post says to plan on 25% to 50% travel.
Can you get an FDE job right out of school?
Yes, though there are few of these jobs and most are at one company. We found 43 forward deployed jobs with intern, new grad or junior in the title, and 31 of them are at Palantir. Its New York new grad job pays $135,000 to $145,000 and is for people finishing school in December 2026 or spring 2027. Cresta, Coinbase, Saronic, Netic, Lio and Mistral AI each have an internship or new grad FDE job open too.
The rest of the 761 jobs ask for experience, and many ask for both coding and time spent working with customers. If you're an engineer who already talks with customers a lot, or a solutions engineer who writes real code, you're closer to this job than the title makes it sound. Our November hiring roundup shows which other engineering teams are adding jobs, and the October jobs report article shows how flat tech hiring has been outside a few areas like this one.
Palantir's new grad post puts the job in one line: "You will not be shielded from the customer, the chaos, or the consequences."
Sources
- Palantir, Forward Deployed Software Engineer, US Government (Washington, D.C.), read November 7, 2026, for the job duties, pay range and clearance requirement.
- Palantir, Forward Deployed Software Engineer, New Grad, Commercial (New York), read November 7, 2026, for the new grad pay range, travel and graduation dates.
- Hiring Tempo, open jobs on 810 company career pages, November 7, 2026. FDE jobs are those with "forward deployed" or "FDE" in the title. Growth figures compare the same 225 companies on September 12 and November 7, 2026, leaving out companies whose lists we cap. Pay figures use only postings where the company itself published a yearly range in US dollars.