> 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, SF Canonical URL: https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/754262bce98e3326 Exa (formerly Metaphor) posts a FDE role to build what the customer runs in San Francisco, CA, at $160,000–$300,000 base, above the senior FDE median of $190,000 across 1,864 postings with pay. Own customer outcomes after contract signing, taking customers from technical onboarding to production and driving adoption, consumption, retention, and expansion. Read from the employer’s posting on November 8, 2026. - [Exa (formerly Metaphor)](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/exa-formerly-metaphor) Posted Jun 26, 2025 by Exa (formerly Metaphor) · open on Ashby as of Nov 8, 2026 **$160,000–$300,000** + equity San Francisco, CA On-site Full-time Own customer outcomes after contract signing, taking customers from technical onboarding to production and driving adoption, consumption, retention, and expansion. - [See roles that fit me](https://nextmove.md/sign-up?from=%2Ffde%2Fjobs%2F754262bce98e3326&placement=top) - [View posting at Exa (formerly Metaphor)](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/exa/8932d319-b456-4ee0-9efd-16d82be8de80/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 $160K–$300K Above the median Midpoint $230K · median $190K This job $160K to $300K. 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 2. Proof of concept (not covered) 3. Implementation 4. Operations Travel **Required, amount not stated** - **Coding**: Writes production code - **Builds for**: External customers - **Level**: Senior - **Role**: Individual contributor ### What they ask for Visa - **Sponsors visas** ### Do you meet what the posting states? 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**: On-site - **Employment type**: Full-time - **Visa sponsorship**: Available - **Travel**: Travel required, amount not stated - **Pay**: ## More like this [Laurel](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/laurel) ### [Senior/Staff Forward Deployed Engineer](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/303b3bfbfb7335e6) San Francisco, CA Hybrid 6w ago $221,000–$275,000 [Distyl AI](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/distyl-ai) ### [AI Engineer](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/2625d8a6aa23c2b2) San Francisco, CA · New York, NY Hybrid 4mo ago $180,000–$250,000 [Black Forest Labs](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/black-forest-labs) ### [Solutions Engineer](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/5280b837122a6a78) San Francisco, CA Hybrid 10d ago $180,000–$285,000 - [Other jobs at Exa (formerly Metaphor) (3)](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/exa-formerly-metaphor) ## The job description from Exa (formerly Metaphor) Posted by Exa (formerly Metaphor) on Jun 26, 2025 ### About Exa *We raised a $250M Series C to build the search engine for AIs. Led by a16z, with existing investors Benchmark, Lightspeed, and YC doubling down, the round brings Exa's valuation to $2.2 billion.* Exa is building a search engine for the AI era. Our Search API currently powers Agents, Fortune 500s, and AI labs as we transform an industry that hasn't been disrupted since the 90s. We're a largely SF-based team of ~100 from Harvard, MIT, Meta, Google Research, ex-founders, and dropouts alike. We are rapidly building the most intelligent search engine in history. We're high agency, low-ego, and united by the feeling that this is one of the last problems worth getting right. ### About the Role Forward Deployed Engineers are the implementation and technical specialists. Once a customer signs, you become their engineering partner: you get them to production fast, make Exa a load-bearing part of their stack, and grow the account from there. You sit at the intersection of product, engineering, and customer success, and you're measured on adoption, consumption, retention, and expansion. You'll embed directly with customers' engineering teams to solve real problems with Exa's API. When something breaks, you fix it. When a feature is missing, you build it. When usage dips, you know why before the customer tells you. You're also our specialist bench: when a presales deal needs deeper expertise than our Solutions Architects have, you get pulled in to win it. This is not a support role. You are an engineer who owns the customer outcome. ### In this role, you will: - **Onboard new customers** and take them from signed contract to production integration, owning the technical plan, milestones, and time-to-value - **Drive consumption and adoption** by finding new use cases, teams, and workloads inside each account and helping customers build them - **Make Exa sticky** by architecting integrations that are deeply embedded in customers' products, agents, and pipelines - **Anticipate churn and contraction risk** by monitoring usage data, quality signals, and customer interactions, then acting on issues before they become escalations - **Identify and drive expansion** with Account Executives, from usage growth to new products and commit upgrades - **Debug and resolve technical issues** across the full stack, from API behavior and retrieval quality to the customer's application code - **Partner with Support** to make sure customer issues are triaged, escalated, and resolved quickly, acting as the technical point of contact on escalations and closing the loop with the customer - **Serve as a technical specialist in presales** when Solutions Architects need deeper expertise on complex evaluations, custom architectures, or strategic accounts - **Turn customer feedback into product improvements**, spotting patterns across accounts and shipping fixes yourself when possible - **Run technical reviews** with customer CTOs, engineering leads, and PMs to align on roadmap, performance, and what's next ### Requirements - Several years of programming experience. You could build and deploy a production server from scratch - Experience working inside real codebases and production systems, ideally with search, retrieval, LLMs, or data pipelines - Track record of high performance in demanding environments, whether that's a top CS program, a competitive sport, a startup, or something else entirely - Comfort owning customer relationships over the long term and holding your own in high-stakes technical conversations - An analytical mindset: you can read usage data, spot trends, and turn them into a plan - High tolerance for context-switching, ambiguity, and sustained intensity - Willingness to travel as needed for customer engagements ### You might excel if you... - Have built and shipped user-facing products end to end - Have worked as a software engineer, forward deployed, solutions, or customer engineer, or in a technical account management role with real ownership - Have driven retention, expansion, or usage growth at a previous company - Thrive in early-stage environments where your job description changes monthly - Are energized by the idea of being the person customers think of when they think of Exa - Care deeply about the problem of organizing the world's knowledge and making it accessible to machines This is an in-person opportunity in San Francisco. We're happy to sponsor international candidates (e.g., STEM OPT, OPT, H1B, O1, E3). In addition to premium healthcare benefits (medical, dental, vision), we also offer fertility benefits and a monthly wellness stipend to all of our employees. Exa is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, creed, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, disability, age, veteran status, marital status, pregnancy or related conditions, criminal histories consistent with applicable law, or any other basis protected by applicable law. [View posting at Exa (formerly Metaphor)](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/exa/8932d319-b456-4ee0-9efd-16d82be8de80/application) ## About Exa (formerly Metaphor) Search engine API built for LLMs and AI agents. Crawls and indexes the web with semantic embeddings, sold as API to thousands of developers. Series B · 50–100 people ## Similar jobs [Amigo](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/amigo) ### [Senior Forward Deployed Engineer [NYC or SF]](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/cb56ee3948417bae) New York, NY On-site 3mo ago $200,000–$260,000 [Deepgram](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/deepgram) ### [Senior Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE), Strategic Accounts](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/f15116f28545e9c4) New York, NY · San Francisco, CA On-site 2mo ago $197,000–$246,000 [Sierra](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/sierra) ### [Healthcare Integrations Architect](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/f70a270105c7febe) San Francisco, CA On-site 3mo ago $150,000–$290,000 [OpenAI](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/openai) ### [Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE), Life Sciences - SF](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/20d2f37618650476) San Francisco, CA Hybrid New · Yesterday $185,000–$300,000 [Decagon](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/decagon) ### [Agent Deployment Engineer - Spanish Speaking](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/3a43d393a714090b) San Francisco, CA On-site 3mo ago $175,000–$230,000 - [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 Exa (formerly Metaphor) and want this page changed or removed? Email info@nextmove.md and we take it down. Employer postings · [How we read postings](https://nextmove.md/fde/method)