> 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.

# Principal/Senior Forward Deployed Engineer

Canonical URL: https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/571d390c3c52ec95

Fal posts a FDE role to build what the customer runs in San Francisco, CA, at $180,000–$250,000 base, above the senior FDE median of $190,000 across 1,864 postings with pay. Principal/Senior Forward Deployed Engineer responsible for helping enterprise customers deploy, scale, and operationalize AI workloads on fal Serverless. Read from the employer’s posting on November 8, 2026.

- [Fal](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/fal)

Posted Oct 9, 2026 by Fal · open on Ashby as of Nov 8, 2026

**$180,000–$250,000** + equity San Francisco, CA Full-time

Principal/Senior Forward Deployed Engineer responsible for helping enterprise customers deploy, scale, and operationalize AI workloads on fal Serverless.

- [See roles that fit me](https://nextmove.md/sign-up?from=%2Ffde%2Fjobs%2F571d390c3c52ec95&placement=top)
- [View posting at Fal](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/fal-ai/f8208e5c-d6ea-4fec-b270-71c0bf0fd3ba/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

$180K–$250K Above the median

Midpoint $215K · median $190K

This job $180K to $250K. 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

- **Coding**: Writes production code

- **Builds for**: External customers

- **Level**: Senior

- **Role**: Individual contributor

### What they ask for

Experience

- **5+ years** engineering background

Background

- **Software engineering**

### Do you meet what the posting states?

The posting asks for 5+ 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**:

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## The job description from Fal

Posted by Fal on Oct 9, 2026

fal is the generative media ecosystem powering the next generation of AI products. We build the infrastructure, tools, and model access that teams need to move from idea to production, and do it at scale without compromise. For developers and enterprises, fal is the foundation that makes generative media not just possible, but practical: a unified platform where high-performance inference, orchestration, and observability come together to unlock new categories of AI-native products.

As generative media reshapes industries across a market projected to grow by hundreds of billions over the next decade, fal is becoming the ecosystem that ambitious teams build on.

### About this role:

As a Forward Deployed Engineer on Serverless, you will work directly with enterprise customers to help them deploy, scale, and operationalize their AI workloads on fal. This is a highly technical, customer-facing role where you’ll act as the bridge between Sales, Product and Infrastructure teams.

You’ll join customer calls, deeply understand their architecture and needs, and translate those into actionable implementation plans and product requirements. You will be responsible for unblocking customer deployments, accelerating onboarding, and ensuring enterprise accounts successfully reach production fast.

This is a role for someone who loves solving real-world engineering problems and wants direct ownership over outcomes that drive revenue and product growth.

### What you’ll do

- Join enterprise onboarding calls and act as the technical owner for deployments
- Help customers integrate their models into fal Serverless (APIs, scaling, observability, deployment workflows)
- Debug customer issues end-to-end across frontend, backend, and infra layers
- Translate customer feedback into clear product specs, tasks, and engineering priorities
- Work closely with Product + Infra to ensure enterprise needs are shipped into the platform
- Build custom proofs-of-concept or lightweight integrations to unblock adoption
- Identify repeatable patterns across customers and turn them into reusable product features
- Improve internal tooling, onboarding flows, and docs based on real customer pain points **Qualifications/Nice-to-haves:**
- 5+ years of engineering background (Proficiency with TypeScript, Python, Postgres, and Next.js)
- Experience working with customers in a technical capacity (Solutions Engineer, Forward Deployed Engineer, DevRel Engineer, or similar)
- Comfortable jumping into ambiguous customer problems and finding solutions fast
- Ability to understand complex systems and communicate clearly with both technical and non-technical stakeholders
- Strong written communication skills (turning customer conversations into actionable specs/tasks)
- Experience working across APIs, infrastructure, and cloud environments
- High ownership mentality: you take responsibility for customer success end-to-end
Comfort operating in a fast-moving, low-process environment
- Experience with serverless platforms, infra products, or developer platforms
- Familiarity with observability tooling (logs, metrics, tracing)
- Background in distributed systems, Kubernetes, or cloud-native deployment
- Experience with AI/ML workloads in production
- Experience in generative AI inference, training and compute space strongly preferred
- Experience writing documentation, onboarding guides, or customer playbooks

### What we offer at fal

- Interesting and challenging work
- A lot of learning and growth opportunities
- Health, dental, and vision insurance (US)
- Regular team events and offsites

### U.S. EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY INFORMATION

fal provides equal employment opportunities to applicants and employees without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, protected veteran status, disability, or any other classification protected by applicable law.

[View posting at Fal](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/fal-ai/f8208e5c-d6ea-4fec-b270-71c0bf0fd3ba/application)

## About Fal

Fal runs an optimized GPU inference platform for generative media (image/video/audio) models, charging developers per-API-call usage.

Series C

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