> 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/8708e316d3429f3b

Column posts a FDE role to build what the customer runs in San Francisco, CA, at $130,000–$250,000 base, level with the senior FDE median of $190,000 across 1,864 postings with pay. First Forward Deployed Engineer responsible for partnering directly with strategic customers to design, build, launch, and debug products on Column’s banking APIs. Read from the employer’s posting on November 8, 2026.

- [Column](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/column)

Posted Oct 6, 2026 by Column · open on Ashby as of Nov 8, 2026

**$130,000–$250,000** + equity San Francisco, CA On-site Full-time

First Forward Deployed Engineer responsible for partnering directly with strategic customers to design, build, launch, and debug products on Column’s banking APIs.

- [See roles that fit me](https://nextmove.md/sign-up?from=%2Ffde%2Fjobs%2F8708e316d3429f3b&placement=top)
- [View posting at Column](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/column/fad3b99d-89a6-4bbd-87bc-1f092ca1145f/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

$130K–$250K Level with the median

Midpoint $190K · median $190K

This job $130K 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 (not covered)
3. Implementation
4. Operations (not covered)

Travel **Required, amount not stated**

- **Coding**: Writes production code

- **Builds for**: External customers

- **Level**: Senior

- **Role**: Technical lead

### 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

- **Travel**: Travel required, amount not stated

- **Pay**:

## More like this

[Bain](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/bain)

### [Lead, Engineering Excellence](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/22a12cc51fef0229)

Atlanta, GA · Austin, TX · +8 more Hybrid 2mo ago

$179,875–$203,925

[MongoDB](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/mongodb)

### [Senior Forward Deployment Engineer](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/ee18b4ffe9431fe6)

Seattle, WA · Denver, CO · +5 more Remote 2w ago

$126,000–$248,000

[Salesforce](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/salesforce)

### [Value Acceleration Engineer](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/d29e7c234296d940)

San Francisco, CA · Palo Alto, CA · +2 more 6w ago

$117,200–$246,000

- [Other jobs at Column (1)](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/column)

## The job description from Column

Posted by Column on Oct 6, 2026

### About Column

For companies building financial technology and transforming the financial services space, the biggest bottleneck to their growth and innovation is often the underlying banks and infrastructure stack they rely on. We have spent our careers founding and scaling companies like Plaid, Square, Meta, Blend, and Affirm, and have seen this problem firsthand — builders and developers needing to partner with traditional banks, and creating API and abstraction layers over the patchwork that is the bank, its core, and many other vendors. All of this results in a complex (and often expensive) banking supply chain involving a user, fintech, BaaS middleware provider, bank, core and the Federal Reserve.

At Column, we set out to simplify and fix this. We are a bank and a software company built from the ground up, offering builders and developers technology-forward banking solutions that cut out the hundreds of vendors, middleware providers, and abstraction layers. This means a safer, more transparent, and less costly banking supply chain. Come build with us!

**The opportunity:
**We're a lean, experienced engineering team, and we're hiring our first Forward Deployed Engineer. You'll define what this role looks like at Column.

As an FDE, you'll work with customers to understand their problems in depth and help them build new products on Column's APIs. What you learn in the field will feed directly into how our engineering team improves the platform.

This is a hands-on engineering role. You'll write code, debug payment flows and design integrations, and you'll spend a lot of time on-site with customers. You'll get deep exposure to the full banking stack, from our APIs down to the Federal Reserve.

This role is based in our Presidio office in San Francisco, with frequent travel to customer sites in the US and abroad. You will report directly to William, the CEO.

Read more about Life @ Column and our hiring process here. 🚀

### What you'll do

- Work directly with our partner’s engineering teams to design, build and launch products with Column's state-of-the-art banking stack
- Act as the technical owner for strategic customers from onboarding to launch, unblocking them on architecture, ledgering, reconciliation and edge cases in money movement
- Write production-quality code, that speeds up integrations and grows into reusable product
- Turn patterns from the field into product and platform improvements, working closely with engineering to shape our APIs, docs and developer experience
- Advise customers on how to build safe, compliant and resilient financial products in a regulated environment
- Represent Column in conversations with customer executives and engineering leaders, and build trusted, long-term relationships

### What we're looking for

- Strong engineering fundamentals, ideally with experience in backend systems, APIs or infrastructure
- Product thinking: you look past the immediate ask to the underlying problem and the best solution, for the customer and for Column
- Excellent interpersonal and communication skills. You can explain complex systems clearly to an engineer or an executive
- Executive presence and the confidence to lead high-stakes customer conversations
- Strong project management skills. You can run several customer engagements at once and keep each one moving
- A self-starter mindset. You're comfortable with ambiguity and with building process where none exists yet
- Experience with payments, banking or financial infrastructure is a plus
- Ideally fluent in either Spanish, French or Russian.

### What you’ll get from us:

- 🏥 Comprehensive health, dental, and vision plans, including options that are 100% covered by Column for you and 100% covered for your dependents!
- 🐣 Comprehensive family planning and fertility benefits via partnership with Carrot, including reimbursement of up to $20,000 in qualified expenses
- 🏡 Up to $2,000 (post-tax) monthly rent subsidy for employees living within 2 miles of Column’s office
- 💳 FSA and HSA account options to enable use of pre-tax money for medical and dependent care expenses
- 📈 401k plan, including self-directed brokerage options
- 🌴 Flexible time-off policy - take the time off that you want and need to relax and recharge
- 🧳 Sabbatical Program - Reach your 5-year anniversary to take up to 8 weeks of fully paid leave to rest, recharge, and pursue personal interest - with full salary and benefits
- 👶 100% paid parental leave, including 16 weeks for birth mothers, 12 weeks for primary caregivers, and 8 weeks for secondary caregivers
- 😇 Up to $4,500 in annual reimbursements for backup childcare
- 🍽️ Catered lunches and dinners for SF employees
- 🚆 Commuter benefits, including paid transportation to-and-from the office
- 🎉 Regular team building events, including annual offsite

### Pay transparency:

Compensation packages at Column include base salary, equity, and benefits. New hire offers are made based on a candidate's experience, expertise, geographic location, and internal pay equity relative to peers.

The annual US base salary range for this role is $130,000-$250,000 + equity.

### We look forward to hearing from you

Column is committed to working with the best and brightest people from the broadest talent pool possible. We value bringing together a team with different perspectives, educational backgrounds, and life experiences, and believe a diversity of ideas is what allows us to develop the best solutions. All qualified individuals are encouraged to apply.

If you need assistance or a reasonable accommodation during the application and recruiting process, please reach out to accommodations@column.com.

We participate in the E-Verify program in certain locations as required by law. Learn more about the E-Verify program here.

[View posting at Column](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/column/fad3b99d-89a6-4bbd-87bc-1f092ca1145f/application)

## About Column

Nationally chartered bank APIs for fintechs and platforms to launch accounts, payments, cards, and lending on direct regulated infrastructure.

Bootstrapped · 50–100 people

## Similar jobs

[Squint](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/squint)

### [Deployment Engineer](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/87c003c8d36a7a5c)

San Francisco, CA On-site 3mo ago

$180,000–$220,000

[Muon Space](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/muon-space)

### [Software Engineer, Customer Solutions](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/73ee51106d0f36e2)

San Jose, CA Hybrid 2mo ago

$190,000–$212,000

[Google](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/google)

### [Forward Deployed Engineer, Kaggle, DeepMind (Fixed-Term Contract)](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/6d6f76669f791f27)

Mountain View, CA · New York, NY 4w ago

$174,000–$232,000

[Arize AI](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/arize-ai)

### [Forward Deployed AI Engineer, West](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/97928758270bd183)

San Francisco, CA Remote 4mo ago

$155,000–$190,000

[Intercom](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/intercom)

### [Forward Deployed Engineer](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/0b7b9b01aafdb7a1)

San Francisco, CA Hybrid 9d ago

$180,000–$237,000

- [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 Column 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)