> 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 Canonical URL: https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/7627c9c421407563 Appen posts a FDE role to plan what the customer deploys first in San Francisco, CA with no pay posted. Translate client needs into scalable GenAI data workflows Read from the employer’s posting on November 8, 2026. - [Appen](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/appen) Posted Oct 2, 2026 by Appen · open on Lever as of Nov 8, 2026 Pay not posted San Francisco, CA Hybrid Full-time Translate client needs into scalable GenAI data workflows - [See roles that fit me](https://nextmove.md/sign-up?from=%2Ffde%2Fjobs%2F7627c9c421407563&placement=top) - [View posting at Appen](https://jobs.lever.co/appen-2/61d18244-84c0-401a-984c-14fc88a1b1da/apply) 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 Not posted Senior FDE postings, 1,864 postings: the middle 50% of posted pay is $160K to $220K, median $190K. ### The work Plans what the customer deploys first Balance **Mostly building** Project stages 1. Pre-sales (not covered) 2. Proof of concept (not covered) 3. Implementation 4. Operations (not covered) - **Coding**: Configuration only - **Builds for**: External customers - **Level**: Senior - **Role**: Technical lead ### What they ask for Experience - **3+ years** customer-facing technical role such as solutions engineering, solutions architecture, data or technical consulting, or data operations Background - **Solutions and customer engineering** - **Implementation and data engineering** - **Consulting** ### 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 - **Work arrangement**: Hybrid - **Remote work restrictions**: Based in San Francisco, California; required in the San Francisco office two days per week. - **Employment type**: Full-time ## More like this [Accordion](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/accordion) ### [Forward Deployed Engineer, Data & Analytics](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/e5a928ae59b6f49c) Atlanta, GA · Boston, MA · +6 more On-site 4mo ago $145,000–$240,000 [David AI](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/david-ai) ### [Deployment Strategist](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/fd354a4590515217) San Francisco, CA On-site 2w ago $145,000–$200,000 [Valon](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/valon) ### [Deployment Strategist](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/7cc05397d71d2c90) New York, NY · San Francisco, CA Hybrid 5mo ago $140,000–$240,000 ## The job description from Appen Posted by Appen on Oct 2, 2026 ### Role Purpose The Forward Deployed Engineer works directly with enterprise clients to design, deploy, and optimize GenAI data solutions, with full ownership of final delivered data quality. Embedded across engineering, data operations, and client delivery, this role ensures datasets, pipelines, workflows, and automations meet defined accuracy, reliability, and performance requirements for GenAI model development. ### Your Impact - Act as a trusted consultative partner to clients by defining requirements, clarifying success criteria, shaping high-quality annotation guidelines, and proactively providing insights. - Influence the what and the why behind GenAI data solutions by translating ambiguous client needs into clear, scalable workflows. - Deliver GenAI datasets that meet all defined acceptance and quality criteria. - Define the validation and automation requirements that reduce variance, manual review effort, rework, and time to validation. - Partner with engineering to build requirements as scalable, reproducible, and observable pipelines. - Contribute reusable quality frameworks and validators adopted across multiple projects. ### What You Bring - 3+ years of experience in a customer-facing technical role such as solutions engineering, solutions architect, data or technical consulting, or data operations. - Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Data Science, Statistics, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience. - Experience working on GenAI, machine learning, or model evaluation data, including LLM training, annotation, or evaluation workflows. - A consultative problem-solving approach when leading client conversations, asking sharp questions, and guiding stakeholders toward better decisions. - Ability to vibe code but proficiency in Python and SQL is a plus - Confidence in working directly with client engineering or machine learning teams. ### Location and Work Arrangement This is a hybrid role based in San Francisco, CA. You will be required to work from our San Francisco office two days per week. ### Why You’ll Love Working Here At Appen, we foster a culture of innovation, collaboration, and excellence. We value curiosity, accountability, and a commitment to delivering the highest-quality AI solutions for frontier models. You’ll work on complex challenges that shape the future of AI across industries and geographies, alongside talented people in a culture that values humility over ego. You’ll have the flexibility to deliver in a way that works for you and your team, supported by tools, resources and development opportunities to continue to build your capability over time. ### About Appen Appen has been a leader in AI training data for over 30 years. We specialize in human generated data to train, fine tune, and evaluate models across generative AI, large language models, computer vision, and speech recognition. Our AI assisted data annotation platform and global crowd of more than 1 million contributors in over 200 countries support model pre-training, supervised fine tuning, evaluation and benchmarking, safety and red teaming, and multilingual global expansion. [View posting at Appen](https://jobs.lever.co/appen-2/61d18244-84c0-401a-984c-14fc88a1b1da/apply) ## About Appen Appen supplies human-generated training, alignment, annotation, and evaluation data to AI labs and enterprises building reliable models. Public · 1000–2000 people ## Similar jobs [Ciridae](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/ciridae) ### [Deployment Strategist](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/ae950227da4dd580) San Francisco, CA On-site 4mo ago Pay not posted [Onos Health](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/onos-health) ### [Forward-Deployed Product Manager](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/1cbb5ba03c1837ba) San Francisco, CA Hybrid 4w ago $180,000–$220,000 [Hubs.is](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/hubs-is) ### [Senior Forward Deployed Strategist (French fluent)](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/7047c5fbf8abdcf7) SF Bay Area Hybrid 3mo ago $105,000–$135,000 [Forerunner](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/forerunner) ### [Deployment Strategist](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/6291fd67760193d9) New York, NY · San Francisco, CA · +1 more Hybrid 2mo ago $120,000–$165,000 [Databricks](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/databricks) ### [Sr. Deployment Strategist, FDE - Digital Native Business](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/857350fa0750d7c2) San Francisco, CA 6w ago $219,765–$302,220 - [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 plan what the customer deploys first](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs?role=strategist) Hiring at Appen and want this page changed or removed? 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