> 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. # Software Engineer, Infrastructure Canonical URL: https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/9ca39e8fc4b3f006 Altara posts a FDE role to build what the customer runs in San Francisco, CA with no pay posted. Own the architecture, deployment, reliability, and observability of complex customer-hosted infrastructure across diverse environments. Read from the employer’s posting on November 8, 2026. - [Altara](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/altara) Posted Sep 4, 2026 by Altara · open on Gem as of Nov 8, 2026 Pay not posted San Francisco, CA On-site Full-time Own the architecture, deployment, reliability, and observability of complex customer-hosted infrastructure across diverse environments. - [See roles that fit me](https://nextmove.md/sign-up?from=%2Ffde%2Fjobs%2F9ca39e8fc4b3f006&placement=top) - [View posting at Altara](https://jobs.gem.com/altara/am9icG9zdDqB6S61MR3u-MiBbzCqg8VE) 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 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**: Both - **Level**: Senior - **Role**: Individual contributor ### 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 ## More like this [Edison Scientific](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/edison-scientific) ### [Member of Technical Staff, Cloud Software Engineer](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/ec956d3e06abdc40) San Francisco, CA On-site 2mo ago $175,000–$240,000 [depthfirst](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/depthfirst) ### [Forward Deployed Engineer](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/eff7e46851b93dd1) San Francisco, CA On-site 2w ago Pay not posted [Decagon](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/decagon) ### [Senior Software Engineer, Cloud Infrastructure](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/e7808131a88984b8) San Francisco, CA On-site 4mo ago $200,000–$400,000 - [Other jobs at Altara (1)](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/altara) ## The job description from Altara Posted by Altara on Sep 4, 2026 **We’re building the scientific intelligence platform for the physical world**, to accelerate breakthroughs in semiconductors, batteries, advanced materials, aerospace, and beyond. These industries represent trillions in spend, but are still trapped in outdated software. We’re changing that by building the intelligence layer to help scientists and engineers move faster and solve core problems -- R&D through manufacturing. We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to create a category-defining company at the intersection of AI and the physical sciences. And we’re building a world-class team to do it. We recently raised a seed round led by Greylock, with participation from Neo, BoxGroup, Liquid 2, and top angels including Jeff Dean + leadership at OpenAI and AMD. Our team (ex-Applied Intuition, Glean, SpaceX, Warp, Jane Street, Verkada) works in-person in San Francisco. Our office is located walking distance from 4th and King Caltrain station. ### What you’ll do - Architect and own complex customer-hosted cloud deployments that run scalably and reliably across diverse customer environments. - Triage, debug, and resolve high-severity issues end-to-end, building bulletproof automated safeguards and observability to permanently prevent regressions. - Design fully automated, repeatable deployment pipelines with deep observability to proactively surface edge cases before they hit production. - Drive developer velocity and build internal tooling that empower the engineering team to ship fast without sacrificing reliability or security. ### We would love to meet you if you have experience - Operating production Kubernetes and cloud infrastructure. - Delivering on-prem or customer-hosted software - Strong Linux, networking and infrastructure-as-code fundamentals - Independently owning incidents and communicating with customers - Working with the following key technologies: - Public cloud/AWS etc, Managed Kubernetes knowledge, IaC tools like Terraform - GitOps/Argo CD, Linux, networking, IAM and observability tooling - On-prem deployment; air-gapped experience is a bonus ### Bonus points if you have - Worked at an early stage startup, founded a company, or plan to start one someday. - Air-gapped or restricted-network deployment experience - Multi-cloud, hybrid-cloud or enterprise security experience - Experience supporting data/AI infrastructure - Experience or deep curiosity in science. ### Learn More about Altara - Website - Video - TechCrunch - Follow us on LinkedIn and X [View posting at Altara](https://jobs.gem.com/altara/am9icG9zdDqB6S61MR3u-MiBbzCqg8VE) ## About Altara Altara builds AI agents that unify fragmented scientific and engineering data to accelerate R&D and manufacturing workflows in semiconductors, batteries, and advanced materials. Seed · 10–50 people ## Similar jobs [Anyscale](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/anyscale) ### [Forward Deployed Engineer - AI/ML Platforms](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/ec34a2647dc8d7d6) San Francisco, CA 4mo ago $250,000–$275,000 [EY](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/ey) ### [EY-Parthenon - Strategy and Execution - Growth Platforms - Software Engineer - Sr Assoc/Consultant](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/db242f263e15ea06) New York, NY · Atlanta, GA · +12 more Hybrid 2mo ago $130,000–$185,000 [Temper](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/temper) ### [Forward Deployed Engineer](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/dc8bc5569b200e32) San Francisco, CA On-site 4mo ago Pay not posted [6sense](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/6sense) ### [Sr. ML Ops Engineer, Forward-Deployed ](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/06ba4bd7675e00f2) San Francisco, CA Remote 11d ago $191,475–$260,830 [UniversalAGI](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/universalagi) ### [ML Platform Engineer](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/f181f4f6b048e95d) San Francisco, CA On-site 6w ago Pay not posted - [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 Altara 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)