> 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, Enterprise AI Canonical URL: https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/c364266bec560fc4 Handshake (AI training) posts a senior FDE role to build what the customer runs in San Francisco, CA and 1 more, at $220,000–$300,000 base, above the senior FDE median of $190,000 across 1,864 postings with pay. A senior forward deployed engineer embeds with enterprise customers to identify high-value workflows and build production-grade AI agents that improve business operations. Read from the employer’s posting on November 8, 2026. - [Handshake (AI training)](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/handshake-ai-training) Posted Sep 16, 2026 by Handshake (AI training) · open on Ashby as of Nov 8, 2026 **$220,000–$300,000** San Francisco, CA +1 On-site Full-time A senior forward deployed engineer embeds with enterprise customers to identify high-value workflows and build production-grade AI agents that improve business operations. - [See roles that fit me](https://nextmove.md/sign-up?from=%2Ffde%2Fjobs%2Fc364266bec560fc4&placement=top) - [View posting at Handshake (AI training)](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/handshake/e2625047-5b76-4d3b-bf44-82278625782e/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 $220K–$300K Above the median Midpoint $260K · median $190K This job $220K to $300K. 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**: 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 Francisco, CA · New York, NY. Could you work in one of these? 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 · New York, NY - **Work arrangement**: On-site - **Employment type**: Full-time - **Pay**: ## More like this [Transformworks](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/transformworks) ### [Forward Deployed AI Engineer](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/01bf224091b6acdf) New York, NY Hybrid 2mo ago $165,000–$350,000 [Wafer](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/wafer) ### [Member of Technical Staff](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/7cacb3e166260f2d) San Francisco, CA On-site 3mo ago $250,000–$250,000 [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 - [Other jobs at Handshake (AI training) (2)](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/handshake-ai-training) ## The job description from Handshake (AI training) Posted by Handshake (AI training) on Sep 16, 2026 ### About Handshake Handshake was founded on a simple belief that everyone deserves a path to a great career, regardless of where they went to school or who they know. Today, we power 25 million job seekers, 1 million+ employers, and 1,600 educational institutions. In 2025, we started Handshake AI and built the fastest-growing AI data business in history. We work directly with frontier AI lab researchers to create evaluations, publish benchmarks, and push the boundary of data. We’ve grown from $0 to ~$1B run rate and pay ~$60M to over 30K individuals every month. ### Why join Handshake now - Shape how every career evolves in the AI economy, at global scale, with impact your friends, family and peers can see and feel - Partner hand-in-hand with world-class AI labs, Fortune 500 partners and the world’s top educational institutions - Work together with engineers, scientists, operators, and more from Palantir, Meta, Scale AI, and former YC founders - Build a massive, fast-growing business with billions in revenue ### About Handshake AI Human data is the core infrastructure to AI advancement. Frontier AI labs currently improve model capabilities with various data-intensive post-training techniques. We believe that data spend for AI training will increase by 3-5x in the next few years and continue for much longer as models take on new domains. Handshake AI supports all of the frontier AI labs, working on their most complex data at the largest scale. ### About the Role As a Forward Deployed Engineer at Handshake AI Enterprise, you'll embed directly inside enterprise customer environments as part of a small, expert team. You'll learn each customer's business deeply — their workflows, their bottlenecks, where the real leverage is — and translate that understanding into production-grade AI agents that measurably change how they operate. This isn't an implementation or consulting role. You'll own the full stack: defining the solution, building and deploying agents, designing evals, and iterating until performance actually moves. Over time, you'll become a genuine domain expert in your customer's vertical — and use that expertise to build AI that keeps getting better. If you've built AI that works in the real world and want to do it again at much higher stakes — with better data, closer lab relationships, and a founding team that moves fast — this is the role. - Embed directly with enterprise customers as part of a small deployment team, developing deep understanding of their business and workflows - Define AI-driven solutions based on real business needs — not theoretical use cases - Build and deploy production-grade agents tailored to specific customer use cases, owning end-to-end delivery - Design and run evals to measure agent performance; iterate and hill-climb until results move - Become a domain expert in your customer's vertical and use that expertise to build better AI over time - Work closely with Product and Platform engineers on your team to ship cohesive, reliable solutions - Establish engineering best practices, agent patterns, and reusable frameworks that help the forward-deployed team scale output without sacrificing quality - Surface insights from deployments that inform Handshake's platform and product roadmap **Location:** San Francisco, CA or New York -- 5 days / week in-office ### Desired Capabilities - 5-6+ years of engineering experience, full-stack with strong backend depth - Real-world experience building and shipping AI applications in production — not just fine-tuning or prototyping - Strong understanding of agent architectures, evals, and how to measure and systematically improve AI performance - Comfort working directly with enterprise customers in ambiguous, high-stakes environments - Strong systems thinking — you can zoom out to the business problem and zoom in to the technical solution without losing either thread - High ownership mentality — you care about outcomes, not just outputs - Strong communication skills — you'll be in the room with senior stakeholders regularly and need to earn their trust quickly ### Extra Credit - Background at a company with a forward deployment or field engineering model - Experience building multi-agent systems in production - Domain expertise in a specific enterprise vertical (recruiting, finance, ops, legal, etc.) - Familiarity with enterprise security requirements, VPC deployments, or on-prem configurations - History of building evals infrastructure or AI quality measurement tooling ### Perks Handshake delivers benefits that help you feel supported—and thrive at work and in life. * **The below benefits are for full-time US employees.*** 🎯 **Ownership:** Equity in a fast-growing company 💰 **Financial Wellness**: 401(k) match, competitive compensation, financial coaching 🍼 **Family Support:** Paid parental leave, fertility benefits, parental coaching 💝 **Wellbeing:** Medical, dental, and vision, mental health support, $500 wellness stipend 📚 **Growth:** $2,000 learning stipend, ongoing development 💻 **Remote & Office:** Internet, commuting, and free lunch/gym in our SF office 🏝 **Time Off:** Flexible PTO, 15 holidays + 2 flex days 🤝 **Connection:** Team outings & referral bonuses Explore our mission, values, and comprehensive US benefits at joinhandshake.com/careers. [View posting at Handshake (AI training)](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/handshake/e2625047-5b76-4d3b-bf44-82278625782e/application) ## About Handshake (AI training) Career network and AI-work marketplace connecting verified students, graduates, employers, and frontier AI labs for hiring, upskilling, and expert model training. 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Email info@nextmove.md and we take it down. Employer postings · [How we read postings](https://nextmove.md/fde/method)