> AI agents: this is one page of Nextmove’s FDE site, in Markdown. Nextmove is a job board and free career service for forward deployed engineers (FDEs). Each posting is classified from its text, not its title: the kind of work, how much of it is production code, pre-sales weight, time at customer sites, travel, remote arrangement, level and posted base pay. The site also publishes the aggregates: median pay by level, metro, company and kind of work, and which companies started hiring FDEs each week. Every page under https://nextmove.md/fde is served this way; the index of pages is https://nextmove.md/llms.txt.

# Forward Deployed Systems Engineer

Canonical URL: https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/02421ed5d2a72ab8

Etched posts a FDE role to integrate and configure the product in San Jose, CA, at $150,000–$240,000 base, level with the senior FDE median of $190,000 across 1,864 postings with pay. Own end-to-end deployment, bring-up, validation, and debugging of accelerator-based systems in large-scale customer datacenters. Read from the employer’s posting on November 8, 2026.

- [Etched](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/etched)

Posted Oct 28, 2026 by Etched · open on Ashby as of Nov 8, 2026

**$150,000–$240,000** + equity San Jose, CA On-site Full-time

Own end-to-end deployment, bring-up, validation, and debugging of accelerator-based systems in large-scale customer datacenters.

- [See roles that fit me](https://nextmove.md/sign-up?from=%2Ffde%2Fjobs%2F02421ed5d2a72ab8&placement=top)
- [View posting at Etched](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/Etched/37798f2c-d2d8-4911-bd5a-41b0f6f7c238/application)

Free. Upload your resume once, see why each FDE role fits, and get introduced only when you say so.

## At a glance

### Posted base pay

$150K–$240K Level with the median

Midpoint $195K · median $190K

This job $150K to $240K. Senior FDE postings, 1,864 postings: the middle 50% of posted pay is $160K to $220K, median $190K.

### The work

Integrates and configures it

Balance **Mostly building**

Project stages

1. Pre-sales (not covered)
2. Proof of concept (not covered)
3. Implementation
4. Operations

Travel **Up to 30%**

- **Coding**: Configuration only

- **Builds for**: External customers

- **Level**: Senior

- **Role**: Individual contributor

### Do you meet what the posting states?

The posting reads as a senior role. What level are you at now?

The job is in San Jose, CA. Could you work there?

Which of these have you used in production?

Answer each one. Nothing is saved or sent.

[What postings ask for, by background →](https://nextmove.md/fde/paths)

## Conditions

- **Location**: San Jose, CA

- **Work arrangement**: On-site

- **Employment type**: Full-time

- **Travel**: Up to 30%

- **Pay**:

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## The job description from Etched

Posted by Etched on Oct 28, 2026

### About Etched

Etched is building hardware for frontier intelligence. We co-design chips, racks, software, and manufacturing to deliver best-in-class throughput and latency across both prefill and decode workloads. Our first products are heavily focused on **inference**. Backed by hundreds of millions from top-tier investors and staffed by leading engineers, Etched is redefining the infrastructure layer for the fastest growing industry in history.

**Job Summary
**As a **Forward Deployed Systems Engineer (Datacenter)**, you will work hands-on in large-scale datacenter environments to bring up, validate, and debug Etched accelerator-based systems. You’ll own customer deployment execution end-to-end, solve complex hardware/software/networking issues under real-world constraints, and build the tooling and processes that make deployments scalable and repeatable.

### Key Responsibilities

### Technical problem solving & diagnostics

- Drive deployments with customers and internal teams to identify risks and establish success criteria
- Debug and resolve system-level issues across hardware, firmware, drivers, Linux OS, and networking stacks
- Perform root-cause analysis on field issues and partner with internal engineering teams to reproduce issues and ship fixes
- Build and maintain diagnostics, monitoring/telemetry, and dashboards to improve visibility into system health

### Firmware & system updates

- Coordinate firmware updates, hotfixes, and configuration changes to improve reliability and unblock customer deployments
- Manage update rollouts with minimal downtime and clear communication to customers and internal teams

### Documentation & knowledge management

- Create and maintain deployment runbooks, escalation playbooks, known-issues documentation, and field service guides
- Capture structured learnings from deployments and convert them into repeatable processes

### Cross-functional collaboration

- Partner with firmware/software/hardware engineering teams to drive reliability improvements
- Collaborate with Deployment, RMA, Sustaining Engineering, and Support teams to ensure smooth handoffs and long-term supportability

### Process improvement & scaling

- Improve deployment workflows, metrics, and best practices to reduce deployment risk, time, and cost
- Identify patterns across deployments and drive process/tooling improvements that scale across customers

### You may be a good fit if you have

- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related field (or equivalent practical experience)
- Experience supporting datacenter customers in systems, networking, AI infrastructure, or field engineering roles
- Deep experience with Linux/Unix installation, configuration, debugging, and performance tuning
- Strong networking fundamentals including TCP/IP, RDMA, and low-latency Ethernet
Hands-on experience with high-speed networking such as 100GbE / 400GbE
- Strong ability to diagnose performance and integration issues across hardware + OS + networking layers
BMC experience, telemetry/monitoring systems, RMA/failure analysis exposure
- Travel up to 30% to customer sites for deployments, on-site debugging, and launch support

### Benefits

- Medical, dental, and vision packages with generous premium coverage
- $500 per month credit for waiving medical benefits
- Housing subsidy of $2,500 per month for those living within walking distance of the office
- Relocation support for those moving to San Jose (Santana Row)
- Various wellness benefits covering fitness, mental health, and more
- Daily lunch and dinner in our office
- Unlimited compute budget subject to ROI justification

### How we’re different

Etched believes in the Bitter Lesson. We are the first inference-focused frontier AI system, betting early on transformer and transformer-like architectures and on increasing model sizes. Our addressable market is the entirety of inference, unlike many of our competitors.

We are a fully in-person team in San Jose (Santana Row), and greatly value engineering skills. We do not have boundaries between engineering and research, and we expect all of our technical staff to contribute to both and work across disciplines as needed.

[View posting at Etched](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/Etched/37798f2c-d2d8-4911-bd5a-41b0f6f7c238/application)

## About Etched

Purpose-built transformer ASICs for inference; 10x performance vs B200 at lower cost. Sohu targets hyperscalers' trillion-parameter deployments.

Series B · 100–200 people

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- [Compare senior FDE salary ranges](https://nextmove.md/fde/salary/senior)
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