> 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 - AI Inference Canonical URL: https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/2b8a281a5eedea88 FriendliAI posts a FDE role to build what the customer runs in San Francisco, CA with no pay posted. Forward Deployed Engineer responsible for deploying, scaling, and operating production generative and agentic AI workloads directly with enterprise customers. Read from the employer’s posting on November 8, 2026. - [FriendliAI](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/friendliai) Posted Oct 7, 2026 by FriendliAI · open on Ashby as of Nov 8, 2026 Pay not posted San Francisco, CA Hybrid Full-time Forward Deployed Engineer responsible for deploying, scaling, and operating production generative and agentic AI workloads directly with enterprise customers. - [See roles that fit me](https://nextmove.md/sign-up?from=%2Ffde%2Fjobs%2F2b8a281a5eedea88&placement=top) - [View posting at FriendliAI](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/friendliai/cd82b036-83df-4f10-88b7-96d79c0fec6d/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 (not covered) 3. Implementation 4. Operations - **Coding**: Writes production code - **Builds for**: External customers - **Level**: Senior - **Role**: Individual contributor ### What they ask for Experience - **3+ years** cloud infrastructure, DevOps, or reliability engineering Background - **Software engineering** ### Do you meet what the posting states? The posting asks for 3+ 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 - **Work arrangement**: Hybrid - **Employment type**: Full-time ## More like this [Cloudflare](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/cloudflare) ### [Senior Forward Deployed Infrastructure Engineer](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/df0b7e1d2651bcb5) Austin, TX · San Francisco, CA Hybrid 4w ago $194,000–$266,000 [Decagon](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/decagon) ### [Senior Software Engineer, Cloud Infrastructure](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/e7808131a88984b8) San Francisco, CA On-site 4mo ago $200,000–$400,000 [Sanas](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/sanas) ### [Member of Technical Staff, LLM Post-Training, Applied](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/24ef7254ad020c1f) Palo Alto, CA On-site 2w ago Pay not posted ## The job description from FriendliAI Posted by FriendliAI on Oct 7, 2026 ### About the job FriendliAI is seeking a Forward Deployed Engineer to assist enterprises in deploying, scaling, and operating generative and agentic AI workloads on FriendliAI infrastructure. You will work directly with customers to solve and implement production-grade applications using our products, such as Serverless Endpoints, Dedicated Endpoints, or Container. Friendli Container is our service that allows customers to download our inference engine as Docker images and deploy it in their chosen environment, such as private clouds or on-premises. Our Friendli Container can be adopted directly to AWS EKS clusters using our EKS add-on product. You will work directly on our customers’ projects, collaborating with their engineering teams to solve AI inference challenges like scaling, orchestration, and monitoring. This is a hands-on, customer-embedded role. If you have worked in DevOps, platform engineering, or SRE for AI applications, this is your ideal position. ### Key Responsibilities - Design and implement large-scale deployment architectures for LLM and multimodal inference - Deploy and manage containerized workloads across Kubernetes clusters - Diagnose production issues, such as performance bottlenecks, and implement temporary fixes as needed - Collaborate with customers’ DevOps teams to integrate FriendliAI’s infrastructure into their CI/CD workflows - Develop scripts, Helm charts, and Terraform modules that simplify repeated deployments - Contribute field insights to shape our platform reliability, observability, and scaling strategies - Lead workshops, technical sessions, or webinars to help customers master infrastructure best practices. ### Qualifications - 3+ years of experience in cloud infrastructure, DevOps, or reliability engineering - Bachelor’s or Master's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or equivalent - Proficiency with Kubernetes, Docker, Terraform, and Helm - Strong foundation in distributed systems, networking, and performance tuning - Experience with GPU-based computing and generative AI model serving workloads - Strong technical background in backend systems or AI tooling - Experience operating workloads on AWS, GCP, or OCI - Excellent problem-solving and debugging skills in real-world environments ### Preferred Experience - Experience deploying large models (LLMs, diffusion models) on GPUs or clusters - Familiarity with inference frameworks (Triton, vLLM, TensorRT, DeepSpeed-Inference) - Familiarity with observability stacks (Prometheus, Grafana, Loki, ELK, OTEL) - Understanding of networking security and compliance frameworks (e.g., SOC 2) - Experience supporting on-prem or hybrid-cloud deployments ### Benefits - A front-row seat to the generative AI infrastructure revolution - Competitive compensation and benefits package - Daily lunch and dinner provided; unlimited snacks and beverages - Health check-up and top-tier hardware support - Flexible working hours and a highly collaborative environment ### About us FriendliAI is the fastest inference cloud for agents, built to run frontier open-weight models in production at scale. It delivers up to 7x faster output token speed, up to 90% lower inference costs, and 99.99% uptime across the most demanding agent workloads — long-context inference, real-time streaming, and accurate tool calling. We are a small, fast-moving team doing work that matters at one of the most exciting moments in the history of technology. With our world-class inference stack, we are building the platform teams can actually rely on. [View posting at FriendliAI](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/friendliai/cd82b036-83df-4f10-88b7-96d79c0fec6d/application) ## About FriendliAI AI inference platform for developers and enterprises, combining open-model APIs with dedicated GPU endpoints and an optimized serving engine for fast, reliable, lower-cost production workloads. Seed · 50–100 people ## Similar jobs [depthfirst](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/depthfirst) ### [Forward Deployed Engineer](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/eff7e46851b93dd1) San Francisco, CA On-site 2w ago Pay not posted [NVIDIA](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/nvidia) ### [ML Ops DSX Senior Engineer](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/76728b0c4db2d623) Santa Clara, CA · Seattle, WA · US remote Remote 10d ago $184,000–$356,500 [OpenClaw Foundation](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/openclaw-foundation) ### [Forward Deployed Engineer](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/bc34865d20736808) San Francisco, CA On-site 4mo ago $200,000–$300,000 [Anyscale](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/anyscale) ### [Forward Deployed Engineer - AI/ML Platforms](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/ec34a2647dc8d7d6) San Francisco, CA 4mo ago $250,000–$275,000 [EY](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/ey) ### [EY-Parthenon - Strategy and Execution - Growth Platforms - Software Engineer - Sr Assoc/Consultant](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/db242f263e15ea06) New York, NY · Atlanta, GA · +12 more Hybrid 2mo ago $130,000–$185,000 - [Compare senior FDE salary ranges](https://nextmove.md/fde/salary/senior) - [Similar jobs in SF Bay Area](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs?region=sf-bay-area) - [Similar jobs that build what the customer runs](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs?role=builds-for-customers) Hiring at FriendliAI and want this page changed or removed? 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