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FDE jobs in San Francisco

San Francisco is the densest Forward Deployed Engineer market in the world. OpenAI, Anthropic, Sierra, and Scale AI run their forward-deployed orgs from SF proper, while Palantir, xAI, and Mistral hire FDEs in Palo Alto, Google in Mountain View, and C3.ai in Redwood City. Posted Bay Area base bands run from about $162k at the entry end to $390k+ at the AI-native startups — before equity.

15 of 18 ranked programs match · Last verified July 9, 2026 · See the full FDE List →

FDEs in OpenAI’s Model Deployment for Business org own frontier-model deployments end to end — discovery, scoping, full-stack builds on OpenAI APIs, and production rollout — for strategic enterprise and government customers. What they learn in the field feeds directly back into research and product.

Base salary
$162k–$280k
Locations
SF · NYC · 15+ cities
Work setup
Hybrid, 3 days in office · up to 50% travel
Experience
5+ years, customer-facing + production LLM work
Worth knowing: OpenAI spun up an entire company for this: the OpenAI Deployment Company (May 2026), backed by TPG, Bain Capital, and Goldman Sachs, embeds FDEs directly into Fortune 500s — and absorbed ~150 more via the Tomoro acquisition.
Aggressively hiring — ~40 open FDE-org roles across 15+ cities

Interview loop, score breakdown & sources — read the full OpenAI FDE guide →

Palantir invented the FDE model. FDSEs embed at customer sites building on Foundry, Gotham, and AIP for defense, intelligence, hospitals, manufacturers, and banks — with the paired Deployment Strategist track handling the operational side of the same deployments.

Base salary
$135k–$200k
Locations
NYC · DC · 14+ cities
Work setup
Office-first · up to 25% travel, more when deployed
Experience
Intern → senior — the only true new-grad FDE pipeline
Worth knowing: The FDE-to-founder pipeline is real: Palantir alumni have founded 111+ companies that raised $11.6B+, including Anduril. Until ~2016, Palantir deployed more FDEs than it had core software engineers.
95 open FDE-family roles (61 in the US), including new-grad and intern tracks

Interview loop, score breakdown & sources — read the full Palantir FDE guide →

Anthropic FDEs embed with strategic customers to ship production Claude applications — building agents and MCP servers, providing white-glove deployment support, and feeding repeatable patterns back to product. Roughly 40% full-stack build, 30% architecture, 30% discovery.

Base salary
$200k–$320k
Locations
SF · NYC · 9+ cities
Work setup
Hybrid, 25%+ in office · 25–50% travel
Experience
3–4+ years customer-facing engineering + production LLM work
Worth knowing: Highest posted base salary of any FDE program tracked here ($200k–$320k). Watch the careers page: recent FDE windows opened and filled within weeks.
Hires in waves — currently between FDE windows; adjacent Applied AI roles open

Interview loop, score breakdown & sources — read the full Anthropic FDE guide →

Google Cloud FDEs are “embedded builders” who code, debug, and ship bespoke agentic solutions inside customer environments, with direct access to DeepMind engineering. A separate DeepMind FDE track embeds with strategic partners on evals and frontier deployments.

Base salary
$102k–$301k
Locations
NYC · ATL · global
Work setup
Hybrid hubs · substantial time in customer environments
Experience
Leveled I–V — genuine early-career entry through 8+ years
Worth knowing: The volume king of FDE hiring — Google Cloud’s CEO personally recruits FDEs on stage, and it’s the only company with public per-level FDE pay bands.
Dozens of FDE reqs live across levels I–V, plus DeepMind FDE

Interview loop, score breakdown & sources — read the full Google FDE guide →

Sierra calls its forward-deployed engineers Agent Engineers: they own the Agent Development Life Cycle end to end, building and tuning production customer-facing AI agents for brands in finance, healthcare, telecom, and commerce. Forward Deployed Infrastructure Engineers deploy the platform into customer VPCs.

Base salary
$180k–$390k
Locations
SF · NYC · global
Work setup
In-person-first · regular customer-site work
Experience
Senior-leaning — production systems + customer comfort
Worth knowing: Sierra rebuilt its interview loop to be AI-native in January 2026 — candidates build with coding agents live in the onsite, mirroring the actual job.
31 open agent-engineering / forward-deployed roles across 11 offices

Interview loop, score breakdown & sources — read the full Sierra FDE guide →

AWS’s new Forward Deployed Engineering org embeds teams of five to six engineers inside enterprise customers for ~45-day engagements, co-building production agentic AI on Bedrock, Kiro, and Amazon Q — designed to leave customers self-sufficient, with runbooks, knowledge graphs, and trained staff.

Base salary
$168k–$262k
Locations
SF · NYC · AUS · SEA
Work setup
In-office default · embedded at customer sites
Experience
6+ years, including architecture leadership
Worth knowing: AWS pitches FDE engagements as outcome-based rather than billable hours — the anti-consulting consulting model, led by VP Francessca Vasquez.
FDE reqs live — major hiring wave expected under the $1B org

Interview loop, score breakdown & sources — read the full AWS FDE guide →

Salesforce FDE pods embed full-time with a single enterprise customer for roughly three-month engagements, personally writing the code that designs, builds, and ships custom Agentforce agents into production. The program spans entry level through principal.

Base salary
$143k–$384k
Locations
SF · NYC · 12+ hubs
Work setup
Hub hybrid, some US-remote · 25–50% travel
Experience
All levels — new grads (via Futureforce) through principal
Worth knowing: Salesforce brands FDE “today’s hottest role” in its own marketing — Benioff made FDEs the answer to the AI adoption gap at Dreamforce 2025.
20+ live FDE reqs across four continents

Interview loop, score breakdown & sources — read the full Salesforce FDE guide →

Ramp’s forward-deployed team designs end-to-end AI solutions for its largest enterprise customers, working directly with customers alongside sales and core product engineering. It’s the Palantir playbook applied to fintech — including a forward-deployed internship track for students.

Base salary
$189k–$330k
Locations
NYC · SF
Work setup
Office-oriented · relocation support to NYC or SF
Experience
2+ years preferred, heavy AI-agent building
Worth knowing: One of the only forward-deployed internships in the industry — a rare student onramp outside Palantir and IBM.
Actively hiring, plus forward-deployed internships

Interview loop, score breakdown & sources — read the full Ramp FDE guide →

Cursor (Anysphere) FDEs embed with enterprise engineering teams to ship production workflows on Cursor itself — large-scale refactors, migration systems, automated PR-review loops, and spec-to-implementation pipelines. The org is hiring FDEs and regional FDE directors across the US and Europe.

Locations
SF · NYC · Remote
Work setup
Remote-friendly · customer embeds
Experience
5+ years, plus 2+ years customer-facing
Worth knowing: Hiring Regional Directors of Forward Deployed Engineering in SF and London — building a full FDE org, not a support function.
Actively hiring FDEs + regional directors (US, EMEA)

Interview loop, score breakdown & sources — read the full Cursor FDE guide →

Perplexity’s FDEs — hired as Members of Technical Staff, Applied AI — design, build, and deploy end-to-end integrations that embed Perplexity into enterprise systems, owning deployments from architecture through production rollout and optimization.

Base salary
$205k–$335k
Locations
NYC · SF · SEA · LDN
Work setup
Office hubs · travel varies by account
Experience
5+ years, production LLM systems
Worth knowing: Highest posted base band of the rising cohort — and FDEs carry the same “Member of Technical Staff” title as the researchers.

Interview loop, score breakdown & sources — read the full Perplexity FDE guide →

Scale FDEs build customer-specific data infrastructure on the GenAI Data Engine — RLHF and evals pipelines — for frontier labs and enterprises, while Public Sector FDSEs deploy the platform inside secure federal environments.

Base salary
$179k–$293k
Locations
SF · NYC · DC
Work setup
Hybrid (commercial) · onsite with 50%+ travel (public sector)
Experience
2+ years (GenAI track) — the lightest bar among major programs
Worth knowing: Its FDEs’ customers include the frontier labs themselves — and the public-sector track puts engineers inside secure government facilities.
~11 forward-deployed reqs open, including a Director of FDE

Interview loop, score breakdown & sources — read the full Scale AI FDE guide →

Cohere FDEs bridge the North agentic platform and enterprise engineering teams, integrating AI into finance, healthcare, telecom, and government with a security-first posture — including sovereign-AI and public-sector deployments.

Locations
Remote (ET) · global
Work setup
Remote-flexible · travel anticipated
Experience
Senior-leaning — production Python, RAG, agents
Worth knowing: Runs FDE specialties most programs don’t: sovereign-AI deployments, Korea/Japan/Singapore tracks, even security-cleared roles.
11 FDE reqs live across four continents

Interview loop, score breakdown & sources — read the full Cohere FDE guide →

Mistral’s customer-facing Applied AI org deploys its frontier models into enterprise production — fine-tuning, agents, and LLM applications from pre-sales through implementation — with a distinctly European footprint spanning sovereign and critical-infrastructure customers.

Locations
Palo Alto · Paris · global
Work setup
Onsite Palo Alto · hybrid NY, Paris, Montreal
Experience
2+ years IC; 8+ years for technical leads
Worth knowing: Posts roles the others don’t — including “Critical and Sovereign Institutions” FDEs and an offensive-security “Pentester, Forward Deployment” track.
13 forward-deployed reqs live globally

Interview loop, score breakdown & sources — read the full Mistral FDE guide →

C3 FDEs design integration architectures, write production code in customer environments, and act as the primary technical contact for enterprise accounts on the C3 Agentic AI Platform — industrials, energy, defense, and federal.

Base salary
$120k–$197k
Locations
Bay Area · DC · Houston
Work setup
On-site · regular customer-site work
Experience
3+ years — Python/TypeScript, cloud, Kubernetes
Worth knowing: Pioneered enterprise FDE alongside Palantir years before the 2025–26 wave — though it now pays well below the new entrants.
~8–10 FDE reqs, including Federal and Defence tracks

Interview loop, score breakdown & sources — read the full C3.ai FDE guide →

xAI’s sole FDE opening serves enterprise customers of the X API — production integrations and prototypes with agentic Grok use cases, developer tooling (SDKs, MCP servers, CLIs), and ecosystem guides. A developer-platform FDE role, not an enterprise Grok deployment org.

Base salary
$180k–$440k
Locations
NYC · Palo Alto
Work setup
In-office, hardcore-hours culture
Experience
5+ years customer-facing platform engineering
Worth knowing: Following the SpaceX merger, this is technically a rocket-company FDE job — with the widest posted band ($260k spread) of any FDE role anywhere.
Exactly one open FDE req

Interview loop, score breakdown & sources — read the full xAI FDE guide →

Common questions

In SF proper: OpenAI, Anthropic, Sierra, Scale AI, Salesforce, AWS, Ramp, Cursor, Perplexity, and Cohere. Across the wider Bay Area: Palantir, xAI, and Mistral (Palo Alto), Google (Mountain View), and C3.ai (Redwood City). That is 15 of the 18 programs on The FDE List.
Posted SF-market base bands as of July 2026: OpenAI $162k–$280k, Anthropic $200k–$320k, Sierra $180k–$390k, Perplexity $205k–$335k, Ramp $189k–$330k, and AWS $193k–$262k. At the frontier labs, total compensation with equity is estimated at $350k–$550k.
Mostly yes. OpenAI is hybrid with three days a week in office, Anthropic expects 25%+ in office, and Sierra describes itself as primarily in-person. On top of office time, most programs expect 25–50% travel to customer sites.

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