VLM & VFM Forward Deployed Engineer

Updated October 26, 2026

$150,000–$300,000Palo Alto, CAOn-site3w ago

This forward-deployed engineering role builds and deploys vision-centric and vision-language AI systems for industrial customers across cloud, edge, and hybrid environments.

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View posting at Matroid

At a glance

Posted base pay

$150K–$300KAbove the median

Median $187K

This job$150K–$300KTypical senior FDE payMiddle 50% of 1,808 postings$160K–$217K

The work

Builds what the customer runs

Balance

Mostly building
Mixed
Mostly pre-sales or support

Project stages

Pre-sales
Proof of concept (not covered)
Implementation
Operations (not covered)

Coding: Writes production code
Builds for: External customers
Level: Senior
Role: Individual contributor

What they ask for

Tools

PyTorch
TensorFlow
JAX
Hugging Face
NumPy
OpenCV
PLCs
SCADA
manufacturing execution systems
video management systems

Less common in FDE jobs

Covers pre-sales24%
On-site37%

Share of US FDE postings that state each fact.

What you’ll do

Train and deploy vision-centric and vision-language models across industrial domains and cloud, edge, and hybrid environments.
Define benchmarks, evaluate production AI systems, analyze failure modes, and improve accuracy, reliability, latency, throughput, and robustness.
Design industrial-grade imaging systems for consistent, high-quality data collection.
Integrate Matroid with manufacturing, control, quality, safety, and video-management systems using common industrial protocols.

What you’ll bring

Bachelor’s degree in computer science, computer engineering, electrical engineering, machine learning, artificial intelligence, or another technical field.
Experience with modern visual recognition models, including detection, segmentation, tracking, action recognition, anomaly detection, or vision-language models.
Strong Python skills for building reliable systems that interact with models, APIs, databases, customer infrastructure, and production workflows.
Experience with machine learning and computer vision tools such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, JAX, Hugging Face, NumPy, or OpenCV.

View posting at Matroid