> 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 Engineer

Canonical URL: https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/07e735e4997db841

Emergence Capital posts a FDE role to build what the customer runs in San Francisco, CA with no pay posted. A customer-facing engineer who embeds with enterprise customers to understand their workflows, build tailored software solutions, and deploy them to production. Read from the employer’s posting on November 8, 2026.

- [Emergence Capital](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/emergence-capital)

Posted Dec 22, 2025 by Emergence Capital · open on Ashby as of Nov 8, 2026

Pay not posted San Francisco, CA Full-time

A customer-facing engineer who embeds with enterprise customers to understand their workflows, build tailored software solutions, and deploy them to production.

- [See roles that fit me](https://nextmove.md/sign-up?from=%2Ffde%2Fjobs%2F07e735e4997db841&placement=top)
- [View posting at Emergence Capital](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/emergence-capital-partners/c0f9e643-ca0e-4891-b101-defb210f0f61/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

Not posted

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

### The work

Builds what the customer runs

Balance **Mostly building**

Project stages

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

Travel **Up to 40%**

- **Coding**: Writes production code

- **Builds for**: External customers

- **Level**: Senior

- **Role**: Individual contributor

### What they ask for

Experience

- **4+ years** software engineering

Background

- **Software engineering**

### Do you meet what the posting states?

The posting asks for 4+ years. How many do you have?

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

The job is in San Francisco, 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 Francisco, CA

- **Employment type**: Full-time

- **Travel**: Up to 40%

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## The job description from Emergence Capital

Posted by Emergence Capital on Dec 22, 2025

### About the Role

You'll work directly with our largest customers to solve their most critical problems – then ship the solutions yourself. This is a technical role with significant customer exposure, sitting at the intersection of engineering, product, and customer success.

Forward Deployed Engineers are the bridge between what customers need and what the product can do. You'll spend time on-site or deeply embedded with customers, understanding their workflows, pain points, and requirements. Then you'll come back and build, shipping features, integrations, and customizations that unlock value. The best FDEs develop deep domain expertise and become trusted advisors to customers.

This role is ideal for engineers who want customer exposure, founders whose companies didn't work out but want to stay close to the market, or anyone who believes great products come from deep customer understanding. You'll have more context on customer needs than almost anyone in the company, and you'll use that context to shape what we build.

### What You'll Do

- Partner with enterprise customers to understand requirements, scope projects, and expand into new use cases
- Build and ship features, integrations, and customizations that solve specific customer problems (you will probably write code for customer-specific integrations, proof of concepts, and implementations).
- Own the full cycle from customer problem identification through technical solution to production deployment
- Develop deep domain expertise in customer workflows, troubleshoot issues in customer environments, and become a trusted technical advisor
- Translate customer feedback and requirements into product roadmap inputs and feature requests
- Collaborate with sales and core engineering to help prioritize what matters most to revenue, improve workflows and systems, and ship larger product initiatives informed by customer needs
- Create technical documentation, training materials, and implementation guides for customers
- Support customer onboarding and ensure successful adoption of new features

### Qualifications

- 4+ years of software engineering experience with strong coding skills in Python, TypeScript, or similar
- Experience in a customer-facing technical GTM role: FDE, solutions engineer, technical consultant, or similar
- Ability to context-switch between building and selling, comfortable in both writing production-quality code and customer meetings
- Strong communication skills with ability to explain technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders
- Experience with enterprise software, integrations, or building on top of existing customer systems
- Comfort with ambiguity and ability to scope and execute projects with minimal direction
- Track record of shipping production code and delivering measurable customer outcomes
- Willingness to travel for customer engagements (typically 20-40%)

### Nice to Have

- Previous experience as an FDE at Palantir, solutions engineer at Scale AI, or similar customer-facing technical GTM role
- Background as a technical founder or early startup engineer
- Domain expertise in financial services, legal, healthcare, or other enterprise SaaS verticals
- Experience with AI/ML systems, data pipelines, or analytics infrastructure
- Consulting background with technical implementation experience
- Experience at a company selling into enterprise customers with complex requirements

[View posting at Emergence Capital](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/emergence-capital-partners/c0f9e643-ca0e-4891-b101-defb210f0f61/application)

## About Emergence Capital

Emergence Capital invests in B2B software founders and pairs venture backing with strategic and operating support.

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