OpenAIBuilds what the customer runs
Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE), Life Sciences - SF
San Francisco, CAHybrid
$185,000–$300,000
From solutions and customer engineering to FDE
554 of 2,493 postings ask for solutions and customer engineering · 323 companies · 426 with pay · median $200,000 · middle half $170,000–$240,000 · read
- Your discovery and customer communication carry over intact, because FDE work starts from an operating problem rather than a specification.
- What does not carry over is a demo that never ran anywhere, so label prototypes as prototypes.
- One deployed integration you designed, tested and supported is the evidence a hiring team is looking for.
- Expect the measure of success to change from a signed deal to a system that still works six months later.
- Compare how many postings prove the product before the sale against how many build what the customer runs on the FDE overview.
Ingram MicroBuilds what the customer runs
Principal Forward Deployed Engineer, Google Cloud
Irvine, CA
$133,400–$226,800
$192,000–$455,000
$208,600–$312,900
OpenAIBuilds what the customer runs
Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE), Life Sciences - NYC
New York, NYHybrid
$185,000–$300,000
NVIDIABuilds what the customer runs
Senior Forward Deployed Engineer, Open Models
US · city not listed
$184,000–$356,500
Amazon (incl AWS)Builds what the customer runs
Senior Forward Deployed Engineer (Model Customization and Optimization)
East Palo Alto, CA · Boston, MA · +3 moreEast Palo Alto, CA +4
$168,100–$261,500
$150,000–$225,000
What carries over
Show work that reached a real environment:
- an integration you designed, implemented, tested and handed into operation
- a proof of concept that became a supported production workflow
- a customer issue that needed debugging across an API, an application and a data store
- a request that led to a reusable product or internal tooling change
Your discovery skill matters most when the customer's data, security rules or existing systems do not match the standard product path. A demo that was never deployed still shows discovery and communication. Pair it with evidence of code, testing, release, monitoring or post-launch support.
What is different
A Numeral forward deployed engineer posting describes customer engagements and implementations, debugging across APIs and production systems, product features and internal tooling, and projects from requirements through deployment, with JavaScript or TypeScript, SQL, AWS, Docker and Redis. A role with only demos and architecture conversations does not produce that evidence.
You maintain the code after launch, make trade-offs when requirements are incomplete, and explain an incident to a customer while fixing the cause.
How to present your experience
"Built a Salesforce integration" leaves open what you owned. Say what the customer needed, which systems you connected, what you implemented and tested, how it was released, and what you maintained afterwards. Make four boundaries explicit:
- What did you build yourself, and what did another team own?
- Did the work stop at a demo, reach a pilot, or run in production?
- Who used it, and what operational responsibility remained after launch?
- Which decision changed the design when the requirement was unclear?
If your role was mostly pre-sales, say so, and show a recent project where you owned delivery.
Five questions before accepting an FDE role
- Does the team own production delivery, or support a sales cycle?
- Who maintains the code after the customer goes live?
- What share of the role is coding, customer meetings and travel?
- Are customer solutions expected to become reusable product capabilities?
- What does an engineer own when an integration fails in production?
Stated in the posting
440 of these 554 postings state a minimum number of years, most often 3–5 years.
Share of those 440.
9.8%54.3%29.5%
- 0–2 years43 postings · 9.8%
- 3–5 years239 postings · 54.3%
- 6–9 years130 postings · 29.5%
- 10+ years28 postings · 6.4%
114 postings state no number.
Our reading of the posting
218 of these 554 postings build what the customer runs.
39.4%24.4%16.1%
- Builds what the customer runs218 postings · 39.4%
- Integrates and configures it135 postings · 24.4%
- Plans what the customer deploys first89 postings · 16.1%
- Builds for teams inside the company40 postings · 7.2%
- Leads the deployment team38 postings · 6.9%
- Proves it works before the sale22 postings · 4.0%
- Keeps customers running after launch12 postings · 2.2%
Frequently asked questions
What do FDE and deployment jobs asking for solutions and customer engineering experience pay?
426 of 554 postings state a pay range. The median is $200,000, and half of them sit between $170,000 and $240,000, from 235 companies.
Which companies are hiring for FDE and deployment jobs asking for solutions and customer engineering experience?
These 554 postings come from 323 companies. The employers with the most postings are OpenAI (21), LangChain (15), NVIDIA (14), Aircall (11) and Amazon (incl AWS) (11).
Are FDE and deployment jobs asking for solutions and customer engineering experience remote?
134 postings allow remote work from the US. Another 172 are hybrid and 112 are on-site. The remaining 136 say nothing about arrangement. Travel is mentioned in 253 of the 554 postings.
Employer postings · Counted over the postings that state what experience they want. A posting that states none, or that asks for experience outside the five we list, is in none of them. · How we read postings