Salaries
Forward deployed engineer salary (2026)
What FDE jobs pay, counted from every live posting we track. By level, city, workplace and company.
Median base
$207k
Middle half
$168–243k
Based on
491 jobs
at 179 companies
Data as of
October 18, 2026
Updated hourly
What FDE jobs pay right now
- Senior FDE roles post a median of $225k, $83k more than entry-level roles ($142k).
- San Francisco Bay Area pays the most of the cities we can measure, at a $234k median across 164 jobs.
- Anthropic posts the highest median base among companies with 5 or more salaried roles: $314k.
- Palantir lists 95 of 840 roles and posts a $143k median, so leaving it out moves the overall median from $207k to $215k.
FDE salary by level
Bar: middle half of jobs · tick: median
Entry level
26 jobs
$142k$140–165k
Mid level
199 jobs
$183k$152–213k
Senior
266 jobs
$225k$200–259k
FDE salary by city
US metro areas with 20+ salaried jobs. A job listing several cities counts in each.
San Francisco Bay Area
164 jobs
$234k$203–273k
New York
186 jobs
$216k$171–260k
Seattle
45 jobs
$213k$179–243k
Remote (US)
32 jobs
$204k$182–211k
Washington, DC
73 jobs
$203k$155–235k
Chicago
30 jobs
$165k$141–216k
FDE salary by workplace
Hybrid
186 jobs
$222k$173–259k
Remote
68 jobs
$205k$176–218k
On-site
237 jobs
$200k$160–232k
FDE salary by company
Companies with 5 or more salaried US roles, highest median first.
| Company | Median | Middle half | With pay | Open roles |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Anthropic | $314k | $300–363k | 12 | 24 |
| Snowflake | $288k | $244–322k | 5 | 6 |
| Sierra | $285k | $285k | 13 | 26 |
| Snorkel AI | $255k | $250–286k | 6 | 6 |
| OpenAI | $251k | $243–265k | 34 | 73 |
| Scale AI | $243k | $206–284k | 18 | 29 |
| Deloitte | $231k | $200–231k | 15 | 15 |
| Retell AI | $230k | $215–230k | 5 | 6 |
| Distyl AI | $225k | $215–225k | 5 | 6 |
| LangChain | $223k | $210–243k | 21 | 25 |
| Anduril Industries | $222k | $193–222k | 8 | 9 |
| Decagon | $220k | $203–285k | 5 | 12 |
| Databricks | $216k | $216–234k | 27 | 61 |
| Nebius | $202k | $202k | 5 | 5 |
| Axon | $166k | $166k | 5 | 23 |
| Palantir | $143k | $140–168k | 47 | 95 |
| Accenture Federal Services | $137k | $137k | 5 | 5 |
| Capgemini | $128k | $107–150k | 6 | 6 |
How we counted
- Every number comes from FDE job postings that our curator checks are still open each day. 535 of 840 live roles state a salary.
- We use the posted base range, one midpoint per job. Posted ranges are not accepted offers and leave out equity and bonus, which can be large at FDE employers.
- US dollar, full-time roles only. Internships, contracts and other currencies are left out.
- Slices with fewer than 20 jobs, and companies with fewer than 5, are hidden.
- Cities are grouped into metro areas, such as Palo Alto into the San Francisco Bay Area.
Use this data
The numbers are free to reuse under CC BY 4.0. Credit Top FDE Jobs and link to this page.
Questions
- How much does a forward deployed engineer make?
- US forward deployed engineer jobs post a median base salary of $207k, with the middle half between $168k and $243k. That is from 491 live, salaried postings at 179 companies as of 2026-10-18. Equity and bonus are not included.
- What do entry-level and senior FDEs earn?
- Entry-level FDE postings have a median base of $142k (26 jobs). Senior FDE postings have a median of $225k (266 jobs).
- Which companies pay FDEs the most?
- Among companies with 5 or more salaried FDE postings, Anthropic has the highest median posted base at $314k. The full table on this page lists every company above that threshold.
Past months: October 2026