> 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.

# Member of Technical Staff, Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE)

Canonical URL: https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/7a7f0ff8964f29ca

XDOF posts a FDE role to build what the customer runs in San Mateo, CA, at $180,000–$290,000 base, above the senior FDE median of $190,000 across 1,864 postings with pay. Own delivery for strategic customer accounts, from scoping requirements through QA and blocker resolution. Read from the employer’s posting on November 8, 2026.

- [XDOF](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/xdof)

Posted Dec 23, 2025 by XDOF · open on Ashby as of Nov 8, 2026

**$180,000–$290,000** San Mateo, CA On-site Full-time

Own delivery for strategic customer accounts, from scoping requirements through QA and blocker resolution.

- [See roles that fit me](https://nextmove.md/sign-up?from=%2Ffde%2Fjobs%2F7a7f0ff8964f29ca&placement=top)
- [View posting at XDOF](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/XDOF/cd508d93-5ae9-486a-a633-48402ef1fe53/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–$290K Above the median

Midpoint $235K · median $190K

This job $180K to $290K. 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 **Mixed**

Project stages

1. Pre-sales (not covered)
2. Proof of concept (not covered)
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 experience

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 Mateo, 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 Mateo, CA

- **Work arrangement**: On-site

- **Employment type**: Full-time

- **Pay**:

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## The job description from XDOF

Posted by XDOF on Dec 23, 2025

### About XDOF

XDOF is the data engine for embodied intelligence. We help the world's leading robotics and foundation-model labs unlock general-purpose robots by delivering the highest-quality teleoperation, on-embodiment, and egocentric data and paired with our own hardware ecosystem and a model fine-tuning loop that closes the loop on data quality. We recently emerged from stealth and are scaling our customer base of frontier AI and humanoid companies quickly.

### About the role

We're hiring our founding Forward Deployed Engineers. You'll embed with our most strategic customers and own their success end-to-end, from translating their model and data needs into concrete collection / annotation / delivery specs, to making sure the data we ship actually moves their model performance.

This is a critical role that today, our founders and core engineers absorb directly. As an FDE, you'll be the single technical owner for a portfolio of accounts, sitting at the intersection of customer delivery and core platform development, and you'll help define our forward-deployed motion as we grow.

### What you'll do

- **Own end-to-end delivery** for a set of strategic customers: scope requirements, sequence delivery, QA before shipping, and clear blockers.
- **Be the first technical responder** for your accounts: triage questions, manage expectations on timelines and on still-maturing data products, and escalate only what genuinely needs it.
- **Represent XDOF's technical depth** to sophisticated customers while protecting proprietary methodology
- **Close the loop:** turn recurring customer needs and delivery pain into concrete input for our data-engine, pipeline, and annotation roadmaps, and codify what works into reusable playbooks.
- **Grow the motion:** as the role matures, lead platform-integration engagements and model fine-tuning / evaluation services for enterprise customers.

### What we're looking for

- **5+ years of engineering experience**, ideally including customer-facing or forward-deployed work.
- **Founding-engineer profile, strongly preferred:** you've owned many things at once and solved hard problems without a playbook, and you want to talk to customers.
- **Strong production coding** (Python preferred), with real experience shipping and operating data pipelines or infrastructure.
- **High agency and comfort with ambiguity:** you drive customer outcomes rather than wait for a spec.
- **Excellent communication and low ego:** you can run discovery, push back respectfully on unrealistic asks, and explain hard tradeoffs to both engineers and executives.

### Nice to have

- Background in robotics, embodied AI, autonomy, or ML data infrastructure.
- Familiarity with robot-learning data (teleoperation, egocentric, VLA / robot foundation models) and formats like MCAP, HDF5, etc.
- Forward-deployed or solutions experience at an enterprise or frontier-AI company.

[View posting at XDOF](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/XDOF/cd508d93-5ae9-486a-a633-48402ef1fe53/application)

## About XDOF

XDOF supplies robotics teams with production-scale training data, teleoperation systems, and tools for developing and evaluating embodied AI.

Series A · 50–100 people

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