> 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. # Founding Forward Deployed Engineer Canonical URL: https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/33f9648658b0d6e3 Atomic posts a FDE role to build what the customer runs in US, at $200,000–$250,000 base, level with the staff+ FDE median of $225,000 across 388 postings with pay. This founding forward-deployed engineer owns the end-to-end development of domain-specific AI agents and AI-native systems of record across software businesses in mission-critical industries. Read from the employer’s posting on November 8, 2026. - [Atomic](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/atomic) Posted Sep 15, 2026 by Atomic · open on Ashby as of Nov 8, 2026 **$200,000–$250,000** + equity US Remote Full-time This founding forward-deployed engineer owns the end-to-end development of domain-specific AI agents and AI-native systems of record across software businesses in mission-critical industries. - [See roles that fit me](https://nextmove.md/sign-up?from=%2Ffde%2Fjobs%2F33f9648658b0d6e3&placement=top) - [View posting at Atomic](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/atomic/b2bfa182-5a40-4545-9e03-980ededc979e/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 $200K–$250K Level with the median Midpoint $225K · median $225K This job $200K to $250K. Staff+ FDE postings, 388 postings: the middle 50% of posted pay is $197K to $262K, median $225K. ### 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 (not covered) Travel **Required, amount not stated** - **Coding**: Writes production code - **Builds for**: External customers - **Level**: Staff+ - **Role**: Technical lead ### Do you meet what the posting states? The posting reads as a staff-level role. What level are you at now? The work is remote from the US. Can you work from the US? 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**: US - **Work arrangement**: Remote - **Remote work restrictions**: United States - **Employment type**: Full-time - **Travel**: Travel required, amount not stated - **Pay**: ## More like this [Striveworks](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/striveworks) ### [Staff Machine Learning Engineer - Team Lead (Active Secret Clearance)](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/932fd0bec7a14bd1) Austin, TX Remote New · 5d ago $230,000–$280,000 [Titan Banking AI](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/titan-banking-ai) ### [Principal Forward Deployed Engineer – Applied AI Focus ](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/edd2854b6730862a) US Remote 5mo ago $180,000–$250,000 [Focused](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/focused) ### [Lead Agent Engineer (Langchain)](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/5bff43269bd70426) US Remote 6w ago $175,000–$250,000 ## The job description from Atomic Posted by Atomic on Sep 15, 2026 We're a stealth holding company acquiring and operating software businesses in overlooked, mission-critical industries - the systems that run the physical economy but have been ignored by Silicon Valley. We're rebuilding them as AI-native from the inside out. We're small, well-capitalized, and moving fast. This is not a research lab. This is a build shop with real customers, real revenue, and real P&Ls. ### The Role You will be **the** AI engineer. You'll own: 1. **Building the industry-specific GPT**: the reasoning layer that encodes the domain expertise of each vertical we operate in. 2. **Embedding AI-native functionality directly into our AI-native system of record**: not bolt-on chatbots. Core workflow replacement. Agents that do the job. 3. **Moving legacy systems of record datasets into new ai-native ones**: Core workflow replacement. Agents that do the job. 4. **Making it repeatable**: Every new company we bring into the portfolio should benefit from the playbook, model stack, eval harness, and infra you build. 5. **Managing AI talent across our operating companies**: you'll be a player-coach for the AI engineers embedded at each sub. **Split: 90% building. 10% managing.** If that ratio scares you, this isn't your role. If it excites you, keep reading. ### What You'll Do… - Ship a working domain-specific agent into a live customer environment in your first 30 days - Build the eval infrastructure that lets us measure whether these agents are actually replacing human workflows (not vibes) - Fine-tune, distill, or route across frontier + open models depending on the economics of each vertical - Sit with customers. Watch them work. Instrument their workflows. Rebuild them. - Write the AI engineering playbook that every future portfolio company inherits on day one ### Who You Are… - You are a builder first. You've shipped things people actually use. Alone or as the clear technical lead. - You are a forward-deployedengineer. You'll fly to a customer site, sit in their office, and understand the business before you write a line of code. - You've been called a 10x engineer and it wasn't in a self-review. - You have demonstrated experience building and deploying production-grade AI/LLM harnesses that connect models to customer data, tools, APIs, and business workflows, with appropriate evaluation, observability, guardrails, and failure handling. - You have strong opinions about when to fine-tune vs. prompt vs. RAG vs. agent vs harness and you can defend them with numbers. - You've built with the current frontier stack (Claude, GPT, Gemini, open models) in production, not just in a Jupyter notebook. - You are allergic to slide decks and comfortable with ambiguity, small teams, and unglamorous industries. ### What This Role Is Not… - A research role. We ship. - A management role. You build. - A "Head of AI" title for LinkedIn. You will be in the codebase daily. - A place for people who need process, roadmaps handed to them, or a 20-person team to feel productive. We are focused on building a diverse and inclusive workforce. If you’re excited about this role, but do not meet 100% of the qualifications listed above, we encourage you to apply. ---- Atomic is an Equal Opportunity Employer and considers applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, orientation, national origin, age, disability, genetics or any other basis forbidden under federal, state, or local law. Please review our CCPA policies here. [View posting at Atomic](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/atomic/b2bfa182-5a40-4545-9e03-980ededc979e/application) ## About Atomic Venture studio that pairs founders with validated ideas, capital, and in-house specialists to launch companies across AI, healthcare, fintech, and climate. Late-stage private · 50–100 people ## Similar jobs [Robots & Pencils](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/robots-pencils) ### [Staff AI Engineer](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/bf50e10caf53c824) US Remote 3mo ago $177,375–$209,625 [Red Cell Partners](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/red-cell-partners) ### [Staff Applied ML Engineer, Federal/National Security](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/d7dbd0967123dff7) Washington, DC Remote 6w ago $180,000–$240,000 [Figma](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/figma) ### [Forward Deployed Engineer](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/a3cc84cc99542a8d) San Francisco, CA · New York, NY Remote 2mo ago $153,000–$376,000 [ServiceNow](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/servicenow) ### [Senior Staff Product Success Architect](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/dcb388279b6f552e) San Diego, CA Remote 2w ago $171,900–$300,800 [Alation](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/alation) ### [Senior Staff Forward Deployed Engineer](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/19479baf50cbb536) US Remote 4w ago $152,152–$205,405 - [Compare staff+ FDE salary ranges](https://nextmove.md/fde/salary/staff) - [Similar jobs that build what the customer runs](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs?role=builds-for-customers) Hiring at Atomic and want this page changed or removed? 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