Data
Forward-Deployed Engineer Salary — 2026
Live figures from 1069 active job postings. Updated daily from public ATS feeds.
Generated 2026-08-14 · 44% of postings have published salary
P25
$165,000
Median
$200,000
P75
$224,000
USD base salary · 441 roles with published salary · range $50,000–$524,500
Full salary breakdown by currency
| Currency | Median | P25 | P75 | Min | Roles |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| USD | 200,000 | 165,000 | 224,000 | 50,000 | 441 |
| GBP | 124,666 | 72,500 | 160,000 | 55,000 | 19 |
| EUR | 95,000 | 67,500 | 144,500 | 65,000 | 11 |
| CAD | 167,500 | 110,000 | 210,146 | 110,000 | 4 |
What drives FDE compensation?
Company stage is the biggest lever. Earlier-stage startups compensate heavily in equity with a lower base; later-stage and public companies flip this ratio. An FDE at a Series A AI startup might take $160k base + 0.3% equity; the same level at a post-IPO company might be $220k base + a smaller RSU grant.
Seniority creates a wide spread. Senior and staff FDEs typically earn 30–60% more than mid-level peers. The title matters less than the actual scope — some companies use "Senior Software Engineer, Customer Deployment" for what is functionally a staff-level FDE role.
Location anchors the base range. San Francisco and New York command the highest absolute salaries. London and Berlin roles with comparable scope run roughly 30–50% lower in USD equivalent terms, though equity packages at European AI companies are closing the gap.
Vertical also matters. FDEs at AI/ML infrastructure companies (model platforms, data platforms) sit at the top of the range. FDEs at traditional enterprise SaaS companies tend to pay 10–20% below the AI-company benchmark.
Top companies by open FDE headcount
The companies with the most open FDE roles right now — a proxy for where compensation data is most abundant:
- 1. Databricks 89 open roles
- 2. Palantir 74 open roles
- 3. Truelogic 34 open roles
- 4. OpenAI 21 open roles
- 5. Scale AI 17 open roles
- 6. Cohere 16 open roles
- 7. HappyRobot 15 open roles
- 8. Provectus 15 open roles
- 9. ElevenLabs 14 open roles
- 10. Sand Technologies 11 open roles
Methodology
Salary figures are parsed from structured fields and free-text descriptions in job postings scraped daily from public ATS APIs. Only postings with an explicit salary range or value are included in calculations (44% of 1,069 active FDE roles as of 2026-08-14). Values represent base salary as stated in the posting — equity and bonus are excluded. Midpoint of a stated range is used for percentile calculations.
Browse 1,069 open FDE roles
Filter by remote, location, or company. Salary shown where published.