> 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.

# How we read postings

Canonical URL: https://nextmove.md/fde/method

Where Nextmove’s FDE postings come from, which jobs are included, how pay and kind of work are read, and what the dates mean.

Every figure on this site is read from employer job postings. Each job links to its original posting.

## Where postings come from

We read the careers pages of the employers we track and refresh the postings every hour. If we cannot read recent data, we hide the job list rather than show old data.

The counts cover the careers pages we track, not every US opening.

## Which jobs are included

US forward deployed engineering roles and related work. Our AI reads each posting as an experienced FDE would: a job whose title names the work is listed, and any other job is listed only when the reading rates it a clear fit. A bare “Remote” location does not show a job can be done from the US.

The [job list](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs) puts the closest FDE work first and varies the companies shown.

## How pay is read

Pay is the base range a posting states, in US dollars a year. Each range is read at its middle. Bonus and equity are not counted.

A median counts only the postings that state a range. An employer needs 3 such postings before we print one, and a metro, level or other group needs 10 from 5 employers. [Advertised pay](https://nextmove.md/fde/salary) is what employers post, not an offer.

## How kind of work and the comparisons are read

The kind of work on each job, such as “Builds what the customer runs”, is what our AI reads in the posting’s duties. The same reading records the level, the coding the job asks for, travel, remote rules and who the work is for.

A share counts only the postings that say something about that measure. Travel is the exception: every posting counts, and one that says nothing about travel counts as not mentioning it. An employer is compared on a measure once at least 5 of its postings, and half of them, state it.

[See what the postings say →](https://nextmove.md/fde/research)

## What the dates mean

“Postings read on” is when we last read the postings behind a page’s figures. “Updated” marks a change to what a page says, not a new reading of the same postings.

When a posting comes down, its job page keeps the last details we read and leaves search results.

## What a listing does not establish

- An employer listing does not mean Nextmove works with that company or can arrange an introduction.
- A removed posting does not mean someone was hired.
- The guides under [Your experience](https://nextmove.md/fde/paths) help you compare postings. They do not predict eligibility or career outcomes.

## Corrections

Send the page and the original posting to info@nextmove.md. We check it against the source and fix or remove what it does not support.

[About Nextmove →](https://nextmove.md/about)

Updated Nov 7, 2026