> 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. # Frontier Agent Engineering Manager, Enterprise Canonical URL: https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/443e90f636abe8b6 Scale AI posts a FDE role to lead deployment teams in San Francisco, CA, at $265,000–$331,000 base, above the senior FDE median of $190,000 across 1,864 postings with pay. Leads an enterprise engineering team that embeds with strategic customers to design, integrate, and deploy production AI agents and systems within customer environments. Read from the employer’s posting on November 8, 2026. - [Scale AI](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/scale-ai) Posted Jan 27, 2026 by Scale AI · open on Greenhouse as of Nov 8, 2026 **$265,000–$331,000** San Francisco, CA Full-time Leads an enterprise engineering team that embeds with strategic customers to design, integrate, and deploy production AI agents and systems within customer environments. - [See roles that fit me](https://nextmove.md/sign-up?from=%2Ffde%2Fjobs%2F443e90f636abe8b6&placement=top) - [View posting at Scale AI](https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/scaleai/jobs/4602177005) 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 $265K–$331K Above the median Midpoint $298K · median $190K This job $265K to $331K. Senior FDE postings, 1,864 postings: the middle 50% of posted pay is $160K to $220K, median $190K. [Compare pay across all Scale AI postings](https://nextmove.md/fde/salary/scale-ai) ### The work Leads the deployment team Balance **Mostly building** Project stages 1. Pre-sales (not covered) 2. Proof of concept 3. Implementation 4. Operations - **Coding**: Writes production code - **Builds for**: External customers - **Level**: Senior - **Role**: Technical lead ### What they ask for Experience - **5+ years** software engineering - **3+ years** management 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 - **Employment type**: Full-time - **Pay**: ## More like this [Scale AI](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/scale-ai) ### [Frontier Agent Engineering Manager, Enterprise](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/d8e8f0dc286de03f) New York, NY 12d ago $252,000–$315,000 [Snowflake](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/snowflake) ### [Software Engineering Manager, AI Migrations (Forward Deployed)](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/61aaf790de9aa316) Menlo Park, CA 3w ago $236,000–$339,200 [Google](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/google) ### [Forward Deployed Engineering Manager II, Data Cloud, Google Cloud](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/800f27a82298228a) New York, NY · Sunnyvale, CA · +1 more New · 3d ago $262,000–$364,000 - [Other jobs at Scale AI (20)](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/scale-ai) ## The job description from Scale AI Posted by Scale AI on Jan 27, 2026 ### About Scale AI Scale AI is the data foundation for AI, helping organizations build and deploy reliable production AI applications. We partner with leading enterprises and government organizations to accelerate their AI initiatives through our data annotation platform, generative AI solutions, and enterprise AI capabilities. ### Role Overview As a Forward Deployed AI Engineering Manager on our Enterprise team, you'll be the technical bridge between Scale AI's cutting-edge AI capabilities and our most strategic customers. You'll work with enterprise clients to understand their unique challenges, lead a team that architects specific AI solutions, and ensure successful deployment and adoption of AI systems in production environments. This is a Management role that combines deep engineering and AI expertise, leading a team, and working on customer-facing problems. You'll work directly with customer engineering teams to integrate AI into their critical workflows. ### Key Responsibilities ### Customer Integration & Deployment - Partner directly with enterprise customers to understand their technical infrastructure, data pipelines, and business requirements - Design and implement custom integrations between Scale AI's platform and customer data environments (cloud platforms, data warehouses, internal APIs) - Build robust data connectors and ETL pipelines to ingest, process, and prepare customer data for AI workflows - Deploy and configure AI models and agents within customer security and compliance boundaries ### AI Agent Development - Develop production-grade AI agents tailored to customer use cases across domains like customer support, data analysis, content generation, and workflow automation - Architect multi-agent systems that orchestrate between different models, tools, and data sources - Implement evaluation frameworks to measure agent performance and iterate toward business objectives - Design human-in-the-loop workflows and feedback mechanisms for continuous agent improvement ### Prompt Engineering & Optimization - Create sophisticated prompt engineering strategies optimized for customer-specific domains and data - Build and maintain prompt libraries, templates, and best practices for customer use cases - Conduct systematic prompt experimentation and A/B testing to improve model outputs - Implement RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) systems and fine-tuning pipelines where appropriate ### Leadership & Collaboration - Serve as the Engineering Manager and technical point of contact for strategic enterprise accounts - Lead a team that is collaborating with customer data scientists, ML engineers, and software developers to ensure smooth integration - Work closely with Scale's product and engineering teams to translate customer needs into product improvements - Document technical architectures, integration patterns, and best practices ### Problem Solving & Innovation - Debug complex technical issues across the entire stack, from data pipelines to model outputs - Rapidly prototype solutions to unblock customers and prove out new use cases - Stay current on the latest AI/ML research and tools, bringing innovative approaches to customer problems - Identify opportunities for productization based on common customer patterns ### Required Qualifications - **5+ years of software engineering experience with 3+ yrs of ** **Management experience **with strong fundamentals in data structures, algorithms, and system design - **Production Python expertise** with experience in modern ML/AI frameworks (e.g., LangChain, LlamaIndex, HuggingFace, OpenAI API) - **Experience with cloud platforms** (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and modern data infrastructure - **Strong problem-solving skills** with the ability to navigate ambiguous requirements and rapidly iterate toward solutions - **Excellent communication skills** with the ability to explain complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences ### Preferred Qualifications - Deep understanding of LLMs including prompting techniques, embeddings, and RAG architectures - Experience building and deploying AI agents or autonomous systems in production - Knowledge of vector databases and semantic search systems - Contributions to open-source AI/ML projects - Experience with containerization (Docker, Kubernetes) and CI/CD pipelines - Experience using Terraform, Bicep, or other Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools - Previous work in a devops, platform, or infra role - Familiarity with enterprise security, compliance, and governance requirements (SOC 2, GDPR, HIPAA) - Proven ability to work with customers in a technical consulting, solutions engineering, or product engineering role - Domain expertise in verticals like finance, healthcare, government, or manufacturing - Experience with technical enablement or teaching programs ### Sample Projects The following are some examples of the types of projects we’ve worked on with customers. All of these projects leverage customer data, integrate directly into customers’ existing systems, and are deployed on their infrastructure. ### Deep Research for Due Diligence For a global professional services firm, we developed a sophisticated deep research agent to assist in due diligence. This agent employs a multi-agent architecture for robust fact-checking, integrates several internal MCP tools, and processes complex, unstructured data sources. This solution reliably saves employees hundreds of hours weekly. ### Churn Prediction Working with a TelCo organization, we built a model utilizing customer data to predict churn likelihood. The system then curates personalized offers based on this prediction. This model was integrated into a "next best action" copilot, enabling call center agents to proactively surface relevant offers to customers, leading to a significant reduction in churn. ### Data Extraction Voice Agent We partnered with a healthcare organization to create a lifelike voice agent and avatar designed to gather unstructured health information from patients. Engineered for low latency, the agent adeptly manages conversational flow, adheres to safety guardrails, and efficiently handles data extraction. This automation saves the organization's nurses hundreds of hours each week. *Compensation packages at Scale for eligible roles include base salary, equity, and benefits. The range displayed on each job posting reflects the minimum and maximum target for new hire salaries for the position and may be inclusive of several career levels at Scale; it will be determined during the interview process based on work location and additional factors, including job-related skills, experience, qualifications, interview performance, and relevant education or training. Scale employees in eligible roles are also granted equity based compensation, subject to Board of Director approval. Your recruiter can share more about the specific salary range for your preferred location during the hiring process, and confirm whether the hired role will be eligible for equity grant. You'll also receive benefits including, but not limited to: comprehensive health, dental and vision coverage, retirement benefits, a learning and development stipend, and generous PTO. Additionally, this role may be eligible for additional benefits such as a commuter stipend.* The base salary range for this full-time position in the location of San Francisco is: $265,000—$331,000 USD ** *PLEASE NOTE: *** *Our policy requires a 90-day waiting period before reconsidering candidates for the same role. This allows us to ensure a fair and thorough evaluation of all applicants.* ### About Us *At Scale, our mission is to develop reliable AI systems for the world's most important decisions. Our products provide the high-quality data and full-stack technologies that power the world's leading models, and help enterprises and governments build, deploy, and oversee AI applications that deliver real impact. We work closely with industry leaders like Meta, * *Ernst* *&* * Young, Mayo Clinic, Time Inc., the Government of Qatar, and U.S. government agencies including the Army and Air Force. We are expanding our team to accelerate the development of AI applications.* *We believe that everyone should be able to bring their whole selves to work, which is why we are proud to be an inclusive and equal opportunity workplace. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability status, gender identity or Veteran status. * *We are committed to working with and providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with physical and mental disabilities. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation in the application or recruiting process due to a disability, please contact us at accommodations@scale.com. Please see the United States Department of Labor's * *Know Your Rights poster* * for additional information.* *We comply with the United States Department of Labor's * *Pay Transparency provision* *. * * **PLEASE NOTE: **We collect, retain and use personal data for our professional business purposes, including notifying you of job opportunities that may be of interest and sharing with our affiliates. We limit the personal data we collect to that which we believe is appropriate and necessary to manage applicants’ needs, provide our services, and comply with applicable laws. Any information we collect in connection with your application will be treated in accordance with our internal policies and programs designed to protect personal data. Please see our privacy policy for additional information.* [View posting at Scale AI](https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/scaleai/jobs/4602177005) ## About Scale AI Scale AI provides training data, model evaluations, and full-stack AI applications for frontier labs, enterprises, and governments. 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