What are required for
Forward Deployed Engineers?
What 870 open Forward Deployed Engineer postings and their in-house equivalents across 330 companies actually ask for · as of July 19, 2026
Open FDE postings
870
across 330 of 7,702 tracked companies
Ask for customer work
77%
the most common requirement theme
Mention LLM experience
24%
in the signature role of the AI boom
Published base spread
$90K to $440K
same title, IC engineer postings
The same title, different asks
Share of each company's open FDE postings that ask for each theme. Darker cells mean the theme appears in a larger share of that company's postings.
| Company | Customer facing | Python / JS | LLM / GenAI | Travel / on-site | Clearance | Degree |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Databricks 91 roles | 92% | 70% | 13% | 78% | 0% | 13% |
Google 71 roles | 82% | 85% | 31% | 0% | 3% | 100% |
Palantir 68 roles | 25% | 79% | 3% | 43% | 53% | 16% |
OpenAI 38 roles | 97% | 50% | 55% | 13% | 3% | 3% |
Anthropic 23 roles | 91% | 61% | 100% | 0% | 9% | 0% |
Cohere 13 roles | 85% | 54% | 46% | 0% | 0% | 0% |
Microsoft 12 roles | 92% | 25% | 8% | 25% | 0% | 100% |
Scale AI 12 roles | 75% | 58% | 33% | 8% | 17% | 33% |
C3 AI 11 roles | 45% | 45% | 0% | 55% | 9% | 100% |
Cresta 10 roles | 60% | 60% | 70% | 10% | 0% | 70% |
Snowflake Inc. 6 roles | 100% | 50% | 67% | 67% | 0% | 83% |
Tribe AI 9 roles | 78% | 22% | 22% | 0% | 0% | 0% |
Anduril 2 roles | 0% | 0% | 0% | 100% | 100% | 0% |
Who is hiring Forward Deployed Engineers
The twelve biggest FDE posters as of July 19, 2026: open FDE postings, with the share of the company's own open roles in parentheses. The bottom bar is not to scale.
What FDE postings ask for
Share of the 857 open postings with parsed requirements that mention each theme; the number in parentheses is the count of postings.
One job, many names
Open postings per title family. Each row notes the family's dominant poster, or how many companies use the name.
What it pays
USD base-salary bands across individual-contributor engineer FDE postings with published pay
What the data says
- The FDE title is everywhere: 870 open postings across 330 companies, and the inventor is now third: Databricks (91) and Google (71) both out-post Palantir (68). Anthropic's unbranded Applied AI org ranks fifth, and 223 companies post exactly one.
- It is a customer job before an AI job: 77% of postings ask for customer-facing experience; only 24% mention LLM or generative AI experience. The exception is Anthropic, where 100% of Applied AI postings do.
- Same title, different contract: Google, Microsoft, and C3 AI require a degree in 100% of postings while OpenAI does in 3%; Anduril's FDE needs a clearance and heavy travel with no customer-facing ask.
- The pay spread is wide open: Published US base bands run from $90K (Palantir's low end) to $440K (xAI) for the same three-word title.
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