Plank Research · Live census

The FDE job market, mapped

We collected 1,276 live forward-deployed engineer postings across 547 companies, from employers’ own job boards (Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby and four more) and sweeps of Y Combinator, Wellfound, LinkedIn, Indeed, and VC job boards. Title-matched and de-duplicated to one row per real role, each individually linked. A posting is one job description, not one hire, and a single Palantir or frontier-lab req can staff many, so read every count here as a floor. A June 2026 sweep put the strict FDE-titled market at ~1,000-1,400 roles worldwide. Count solutions, implementation, and field engineers doing the same job under another title and the number clears 20,000.

live FDE postings collected, every one individually linked below
1,276
live FDE postings collected, every one individually linked below
companies hiring FDEs, from frontier labs to seed-stage YC startups
547
companies hiring FDEs, from frontier labs to seed-stage YC startups
median posted base midpoint, across the 397 postings that disclose pay
$203K
median posted base midpoint, across the 397 postings that disclose pay
of openings sit at frontier labs and Palantir, the enterprise-facing core
10%
of openings sit at frontier labs and Palantir, the enterprise-facing core

Six things the data makes clear

Every figure links to the chart it came from. Hover to see the source.

01A company’s first forward-deployed-engineer req is the earliest public signal it is shifting from product-led to enterprise revenue, a leading indicator now visible across 547 companies and 21 verticals after 729% year-over-year posting growth.
02The role is more global than its reputation: two-thirds of the openings sit in the United States and a third run international, yet US demand still clusters on the coasts at a median 22% above the heartland, pricing a travel-defined job as if nearness to capital, not to the customer, set the wage.
03By a Series B the median base ($235K, within $11K of a frontier lab’s base) all but matches the labs, but base is where the resemblance ends: equity is 55 to 70% of a frontier-lab package, pushing total compensation there past $700K, so the two look alike only on the one line that matters least.
0495% of enterprise GenAI pilots still return nothing to the P&L, and the one variable that doubles the odds of reaching production is not a better model but embedding the engineers who deploy it.
05An employer’s vertical shifts a forward-deployed engineer’s pay more than seniority does: $250K at a foundation-model lab versus $148K in industrial AI is a $102K swing, wider than the $71K gap from mid-level to head of the function.
06The frontier labs now pitch operating companies forward-deployed engineers who deploy their own stack, but since deployment is only about 20% of an AI system’s lifetime cost, the lock-in lands in the 80% paid for later.

How many FDE jobs are there, really?

It depends entirely on where you draw the line, so here is the whole ladder, from an exhaustive June 2026 sweep of every major job source. Roles literally titled “forward deployed engineer” numbered ~1,000-1,400 worldwide, de-duplicated. But the job itself, a customer-embedded engineer who ships in production, is also done by solutions, implementation, and field engineers; count all of them and you clear 20,000 globally. What isn’t real is the “56,000+” LinkedIn shows: that’s OR-matched word-soup, and Indeed’s own count drops ~70× the moment you restrict it to the title.

All customer-embedded delivery rolesbroadest18,000-25,000Solutions, implementation, field, and professional-services engineers worldwide. Many do the same job an FDE does, embedding with a customer and shipping in production under a different title. The solutions-engineer family alone is roughly 18,000 to 24,000 worldwide across the major ATS aggregators. This is the definition under which “20,000+ FDE jobs” is true.
FDE + AI-era equivalentsAI-inclusive3,000-6,000The FDE title family plus the AI-native rebrands doing identical work: applied AI engineer, customer engineer, agent engineer, forward-deployed AI engineer. The boundary here is a judgment call, not a clean measurement.
All FDE-titled variants, de-duplicatedtitle family1,500-2,000Every genuine FDE title (“forward deployed,” “deployed,” and “field deployed” engineer), de-duplicated, global, with roughly 900 to 1,300 in the US. Aggregator data shows most “deployed engineer” titles already are forward-deployed, so this barely exceeds the strict count.
Strict “forward deployed engineer,” de-duplicatedstrict, global~1,000-1,400Roles literally titled forward deployed engineer, de-duplicated across hundreds of company ATS systems. The leading ATS aggregator's exact-phrase count is 1,031 live worldwide (1,391 all-time), and 650 to 885 in the US. Growing fast: Indeed indexed +729% year over year.
Plank census, verified & individually linkedour census1,276The subset we confirmed live and linked one by one, across 547 companies, each row pointing to the company's own posting. Built by re-scanning every employer's ATS and a site-scoped sweep of Ashby, Lever, Greenhouse, Rippling, and Workable, counting distinct role-and-location postings (so a role open in several cities counts once per city). That it nearly reaches the strict-titled estimate above, built from a single aggregator's de-duplication, suggests that estimate is conservative.

Both answers are true. They ask different questions. Roles literally titled “forward deployed engineer” number roughly 1,000 to 1,400 worldwide and are climbing fast. But the job itself, a customer-embedded engineer who ships in production, is also done by solutions, implementation, and field engineers, and counting all of them clears 20,000 globally. What you won't find is tens of thousands of roles actually titled FDE. The “56,000+” on LinkedIn is OR-matched word-soup, not real demand.

Who is hiring FDEs, and where

Demand concentrates hard: Palantir and the frontier labs account for most open roles, but the long tail, growth-stage AI products hiring their first FDEs, is where the category is spreading fastest.

Top employers

Open FDE postings per company (unique live postings, not headcount). Beyond these, a long tail of 535 companies accounts for 953 more postings, mostly one or two roles each.

By segment

Frontier labs sell deployment; Palantir invented it; growth startups are adopting it.

By region

Posting locations normalized to region. Multi-location postings counted once at the primary location.

By industry vertical

Each employer's primary vertical. Defense, foundation-model labs, and data/AI platforms lead the named categories; the large 'Enterprise software' bucket is the catch-all for the long tail of AI companies a name-and-title keyword pass could not place more precisely.

Posted base-salary ranges

The 14 companies with the most disclosed-pay postings (of 397 postings disclosing pay). Bars span the lowest posted minimum to the highest posted maximum; n = postings with disclosed pay.

By seniority

Inferred from titles. Most postings don't level the role in the title, consistent with FDE being hired as a senior-by-default, single-track role.

What the job descriptions ask for

We parsed the full text of 904 forward-deployed engineer job descriptions and counted what they actually require. Each bar is the share of descriptions that name a given technology or skill. Two things stand out: the role runs on Python and the modern LLM stack, and what separates it from an ordinary backend job is the human part, customer-facing work, travel, and stakeholder management.