> 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. # Senior Forward Deployed Engineer (Backend) Canonical URL: https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/8aa4bc400c315f92 Postman posts a senior FDE role to build what the customer runs in San Francisco, CA, at $220,000–$240,000 base, above the senior FDE median of $190,000 across 1,864 postings with pay. Senior Forward Deployed Engineer building and operating production-grade backend and distributed systems for enterprise customers, including deployments in environments Postman does not control. Read from the employer’s posting on November 8, 2026. - [Postman](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/postman) Posted Aug 8, 2025 by Postman · open on Greenhouse as of Nov 8, 2026 **$220,000–$240,000** + equity San Francisco, CA On-site Senior Forward Deployed Engineer building and operating production-grade backend and distributed systems for enterprise customers, including deployments in environments Postman does not control. - [See roles that fit me](https://nextmove.md/sign-up?from=%2Ffde%2Fjobs%2F8aa4bc400c315f92&placement=top) - [View posting at Postman](https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/postman/jobs/6672559003) 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 $220K–$240K Above the median Midpoint $230K · median $190K This job $220K to $240K. 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 - **Coding**: Writes production code - **Builds for**: External customers - **Level**: Senior - **Role**: Technical lead ### What they ask for Experience - **5+ years** backend or systems engineering 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 - **Work arrangement**: On-site - **Pay**: ## More like this [Google](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/google) ### [Senior Forward Deployed Engineer, Google Labs](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/4d1c7448b8630fd7) Mountain View, CA · New York, NY 11d ago $174,000–$252,000 [Cloudflare](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/cloudflare) ### [Senior Forward Deployed Infrastructure Engineer](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/df0b7e1d2651bcb5) Austin, TX · San Francisco, CA Hybrid 4w ago $194,000–$266,000 [Gray Swan](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/gray-swan) ### [Senior Forward Deployed Engineer – Enterprise](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/2f8298f975b489cb) San Francisco, CA Remote 2mo ago $175,000–$220,000 - [Other jobs at Postman (1)](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/postman) ## The job description from Postman Posted by Postman on Aug 8, 2025 ### Who Are We? Postman is the world’s leading API platform, used by more than 45 million+ developers and 500,000 organizations, including 98% of the Fortune 500. Postman is helping developers and professionals across the globe build the API-first world by simplifying each step of the API lifecycle and streamlining collaboration—enabling users to create better APIs, faster. The company is headquartered in San Francisco and has offices in Boston, New York, Austin, Tokyo, London, and Bangalore - where Postman was founded. Postman is privately held, with funding from Battery Ventures, BOND, Coatue, CRV, Insight Partners, and Nexus Venture Partners. Learn more at postman.com or connect with Postman on X via @getpostman. P.S: We highly recommend reading The "API-First World" graphic novel to understand the bigger picture and our vision at Postman. ### The Opportunity The Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) team tackles some of Postman's most strategic technical challenges. We partner directly with enterprise customers to solve problems that don't fit neatly into existing product boundaries, building production-grade solutions that often become core product capabilities. As a Sr. Forward Deployed Engineer, you'll operate at the intersection of engineering, product, and customer success. You'll deploy Postman's critical infrastructure into customer environments, solve complex distributed systems challenges, and build the enterprise foundations that enable customers to safely adopt AI at scale. **This isn't consulting or professional services. **You're an engineer building production systems alongside customers, turning real-world deployments into durable platform capabilities used by thousands of organizations. This team will build 0-to-1 products from scratch - innovative, strategic initiatives designed to unlock hundreds of millions of dollars in new revenue. If you enjoy difficult engineering problems, working directly with customers, and building products from the field, you'll thrive here. ### What You’ll Do - Customize and deploy Postman's data-path components into customer environments and make them run reliably: deployment, hardening, and the field engineering required to operate on infrastructure we don't control. - Engineer for performance, availability, and fault tolerance where it's hardest: live traffic on the critical path, running in environments we don't control. Hold the line on latency and reliability under real customer load. - Build the IT controls and enablement that unlock Applied AI for our customers: the identity, policy, governance, and observability that let an enterprise safely run AI agents against their APIs. This is the layer that turns "interesting AI demo" into "AI in production" inside a regulated enterprise. - Turn field experience into a product. Take what you learn in real customer deployments and feed it back to core engineering, hardening one-off solutions into durable product capabilities. - Set the engineering bar for FDE's data-path work in the field, mentor engineers, and help grow the team as the surface expands. ### About You You are an experienced backend or distributed systems engineer who enjoys solving difficult technical problems while working directly with customers. You likely have: - 5+ years of backend or systems engineering experience, with proven end-to-end ownership of large-scale distributed systems. - Experience building high-throughput, low-latency backend services, with strong command of concurrency, performance tuning, fault tolerance, and high availability. - Expert-level engineering in a backend or systems language such as Go, Python, Java, Rust, or C++, on Linux, with strong debugging skills in complex production codebases. - A track record as a technical lead or architect on a significant backend system, setting technical direction and raising the quality bar across a team. - Comfort with ownership and ambiguity: able to work autonomously in a small team, make decisions independently, and drive high-stakes projects to completion in the field. - A builder's interest in enterprise IT controls and enablement (identity, authorization, policy, governance, observability) as the foundation that lets customers adopt Applied AI safely. - Strong communication and a genuine willingness to engage directly with customers and field teams. ### Nice to Have We're especially excited if you have experience with: - Experience with software deployed and operated in customer environments (on-prem, appliance, agent, or self-hosted), including install, upgrade, and remote diagnosis. - Familiarity with identity and authorization (OAuth2, OIDC, SCIM), API gateways, or policy enforcement systems. - Familiarity with the agentic AI stack: LLM-based agents, MCP, evaluation frameworks, or agent orchestration. - Experience building observability into products deployed across many heterogeneous customer environments. ### Why You'll Love This Role - Solve technically challenging distributed systems problems with real customer impact. - Work directly with some of the world's largest enterprises as they modernize their API and AI infrastructure. - Influence Postman's product roadmap by transforming customer problems into platform capabilities. - Help define and build a growing Forward Deployed Engineering organization from the ground up. - Build the infrastructure that enables enterprises to safely deploy AI at production scale. The reasonably estimated base salary for this role ranges from $220,000 to $240,000, plus a competitive equity package. Actual compensation is based on the candidate's skills, qualifications, and experience. ### What Else? In addition to Postman's pay-on-performance philosophy, and a flexible schedule working with a fun, collaborative team, Postman offers a comprehensive set of benefits, including full medical coverage, flexible PTO, wellness reimbursement, and a monthly lunch stipend. Along with that, our wellness programs will help you stay in the best of your physical and mental health. Our frequent and fascinating team-building events will keep you connected, while our donation-matching program can support the causes you care about. We’re building a long-term company with an inclusive culture where everyone can be the best version of themselves. At Postman we value in person collaboration. We are in office 5 days a week for all roles based out of our hubs in San Francisco Bay Area, Boston, Austin, New York City, Tokyo and London. For roles based in Bangalore, employees currently work in the office three days a week and will transition to five days per week by the end of the year. We were thoughtful in our approach which is based on collaboration and grounded in feedback from our workforce, leadership team, and peers. The benefits of our in office model will be shared knowledge, brainstorming sessions, communication, and building trust in-person that cannot be replicated via zoom. ### Our Values At Postman, we create with the same curiosity that we see in our users. We value transparency and honest communication about not only successes, but also failures. In our work, we focus on specific goals that add up to a larger vision. Our inclusive work culture ensures that everyone is valued equally as important pieces of our final product. We are dedicated to delivering the best products we can. ### Equal opportunity Postman is an Equal Employment Opportunity and Affirmative Action Employer. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender perception or identity, national origin, age, marital status, protected veteran status, or disability status. Headhunters and recruitment agencies may not submit resumes/CVs through this website or directly to managers. Postman does not accept unsolicited headhunter and agency resumes. Postman will not pay fees to any third-party agency or company that does not have a signed agreement with Postman. [View posting at Postman](https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/postman/jobs/6672559003) ## About Postman World's leading API platform for 40M+ developers and 500K organizations enabling API-first collaboration, testing, documentation, and lifecycle management. Late-stage private · 1000–2000 people ## Similar jobs [OpenClaw Foundation](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/openclaw-foundation) ### [Forward Deployed Engineer](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/bc34865d20736808) San Francisco, CA On-site 4mo ago $200,000–$300,000 [NVIDIA](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/nvidia) ### [Senior MLOps Engineer - DSX Enablement](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/d111a9977bdaacbb) Santa Clara, CA · Seattle, WA · US remote Remote 2mo ago $184,000–$356,500 [Salesforce](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/salesforce) ### [Lead Software Engineer, AI Labs (Product and Customer Facing)](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/2d1c287890786103) San Francisco, CA · Washington, DC · +1 more 2w ago $148,500–$344,700 [jeffreym-consulting](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/jeffreym-consulting) ### [Senior Forward Deployed Engineer](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/160095c9c45ee8af) San Francisco, CA On-site New · 2d ago $180,000–$250,000 [Roboflow](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/roboflow) ### [Forward Deployed Engineer](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/d8c0abf8214d490b) New York, NY · San Francisco, CA Remote 5mo ago $180,000–$250,000 - [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 Postman and want this page changed or removed? 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