$270,000–$300,000 · OTE
From solutions and customer engineering to FDE
552 of 2,359 postings ask for solutions and customer engineering · 321 companies · 431 state pay: median $200,000, half $170,000–$237,000
Postings read on
Published · Updated
Stated in the posting
414 of these 552 postings state a minimum number of years, most often 3–5 years.
Share of those 414.
8.9%55.3%29.2%
- 0–2 years37 postings · 8.9%
- 3–5 years229 postings · 55.3%
- 6–9 years121 postings · 29.2%
- 10+ years27 postings · 6.5%
138 postings state no number.
The minimum number of years each posting states. A posting that gives no number is not a posting that wants none.
Our reading of the posting
217 of these 552 postings build what the customer runs.
39.3%25.5%15.6%
- Builds what the customer runs217 postings · 39.3%
- Integrates and configures it141 postings · 25.5%
- Plans what the customer deploys first86 postings · 15.6%
- Leads the deployment team40 postings · 7.2%
- Builds for teams inside the company35 postings · 6.3%
- Proves it works before the sale24 postings · 4.3%
- Keeps customers running after launch9 postings · 1.6%
What an employer asks you to arrive with and what the job turns out to be are two readings of one posting, and they disagree constantly. The guide below is about the first. This bar is the second.
Pay not posted
Amazon (incl AWS)Builds what the customer runs
Senior Forward Deployed Engineer (Model Customization and Optimization)
Boston, MA · Seattle, WA · +3 moreBoston, MA +4
$168,100–$250,200
$157,500–$185,000
$149,000–$185,000
$180,000–$250,000
$165,830–$243,142
$184,000–$356,500
$150,000–$170,000
$180,000–$255,000
$165,000–$190,000
TitanBuilds what the customer runs
Forward Deployed Engineer
San Francisco, CA · New York, NYSan Francisco, CA +1On-site
$180,000–$480,000
$155,000–$175,000
$100,000–$130,000
$150,000–$200,000
Showing 15 of 552 matching postings. Open the full search and adjust filters →
- Your discovery and customer communication carry over intact, because FDE work starts from an operating problem rather than a specification.
- What does not carry over is a demo that never ran anywhere, so label prototypes as prototypes.
- One deployed integration you designed, tested and supported is the evidence a hiring team is looking for.
- Expect the measure of success to change from a signed deal to a system that still works six months later.
- Compare how many postings prove the product before the sale against how many build what the customer runs on the FDE overview.
What carries over
Show work that reached a real environment:
- an integration you designed, implemented, tested and handed into operation
- a proof of concept that became a supported production workflow
- a customer issue that needed debugging across an API, an application and a data store
- a request that led to a reusable product or internal tooling change
Your discovery skill matters most when the customer's data, security rules or existing systems do not match the standard product path. A demo that was never deployed still shows discovery and communication. Pair it with evidence of code, testing, release, monitoring or post-launch support.
What is different
A Numeral forward deployed engineer posting describes customer engagements and implementations, debugging across APIs and production systems, product features and internal tooling, and projects from requirements through deployment, with JavaScript or TypeScript, SQL, AWS, Docker and Redis. A role with only demos and architecture conversations does not produce that evidence.
You maintain the code after launch, make trade-offs when requirements are incomplete, and explain an incident to a customer while fixing the cause.
How to present your experience
"Built a Salesforce integration" leaves open what you owned. Say what the customer needed, which systems you connected, what you implemented and tested, how it was released, and what you maintained afterwards. Make four boundaries explicit:
- What did you build yourself, and what did another team own?
- Did the work stop at a demo, reach a pilot, or run in production?
- Who used it, and what operational responsibility remained after launch?
- Which decision changed the design when the requirement was unclear?
If your role was mostly pre-sales, say so, and show a recent project where you owned delivery.
Five questions before accepting an FDE role
- Does the team own production delivery, or support a sales cycle?
- Who maintains the code after the customer goes live?
- What share of the role is coding, customer meetings and travel?
- Are customer solutions expected to become reusable product capabilities?
- What does an engineer own when an integration fails in production?
Frequently asked questions
What do FDE and deployment jobs asking for solutions and customer engineering experience pay?
431 of 552 postings state a pay range. The median is $200,000, and half of them sit between $170,000 and $237,000, from 236 companies.
Which companies are hiring for FDE and deployment jobs asking for solutions and customer engineering experience?
These 552 postings come from 321 companies. The employers with the most postings are LangChain (16), OpenAI (15), NVIDIA (10), Amazon (incl AWS) (9) and Databricks (8).
Are FDE and deployment jobs asking for solutions and customer engineering experience remote?
133 postings allow remote work from the US. Another 167 are hybrid and 119 are on-site. The remaining 133 say nothing about arrangement. Travel is mentioned in 249 of the 552 postings.
Counted over the 552 postings in this search. Postings read on October 24, 2026. These are the postings Nextmove tracks today, not a market survey.
Employer postings · Counted over the postings that state what experience they want. A posting that states none, or that asks for experience outside the five we list, is in none of them. · How we read postings