Salaries · snapshot
Forward Deployed Engineer Salary, October 2026
What FDE jobs paid that month, counted from every live posting we tracked.
Median base
$210k
Middle half
$168–244k
Based on
423 jobs
at 145 companies
Data as of
October 15, 2026
Frozen snapshot
What FDE jobs pay right now
- Senior FDE roles post a median of $225k, $85k more than entry-level roles ($140k).
- San Francisco Bay Area pays the most of the cities we can measure, at a $235k median across 139 jobs.
- Anthropic posts the highest median base among companies with 5 or more salaried roles: $336k.
- Palantir lists 97 of 734 roles and posts a $143k median, so leaving it out moves the overall median from $210k to $215k.
FDE salary by level
Bar: middle half of jobs · tick: median
Entry level
20 jobs
$140k$140–165k
Mid level
175 jobs
$180k$151–214k
Senior
228 jobs
$225k$203–261k
FDE salary by city
US metro areas with 20+ salaried jobs. A job listing several cities counts in each.
San Francisco Bay Area
139 jobs
$235k$205–284k
New York
166 jobs
$216k$175–260k
Seattle
39 jobs
$210k$177–243k
Washington, DC
68 jobs
$208k$166–235k
Chicago
20 jobs
$202k$150–220k
Remote (US)
23 jobs
$202k$178–211k
FDE salary by workplace
Hybrid
162 jobs
$222k$175–259k
Remote
48 jobs
$205k$176–220k
On-site
213 jobs
$200k$163–235k
FDE salary by company
Companies with 5 or more salaried US roles, highest median first.
| Company | Median | Middle half | With pay | Open roles |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Anthropic | $336k | $300–363k | 10 | 23 |
| Sierra | $285k | $285k | 13 | 26 |
| Snorkel AI | $255k | $250–286k | 6 | 6 |
| OpenAI | $251k | $243–265k | 34 | 73 |
| Scale AI | $243k | $206–284k | 18 | 28 |
| Retell AI | $230k | $215–230k | 5 | 6 |
| Distyl AI | $225k | $215–225k | 5 | 6 |
| LangChain | $223k | $210–243k | 21 | 24 |
| Anduril Industries | $222k | $193–222k | 8 | 9 |
| Decagon | $220k | $203–285k | 5 | 12 |
| Databricks | $216k | $216–234k | 27 | 62 |
| Deloitte | $215k | $200–231k | 8 | 8 |
| Nebius | $202k | $202k | 5 | 5 |
| Axon | $166k | $166k | 5 | 23 |
| Palantir | $143k | $140–168k | 47 | 97 |
| Accenture Federal Services | $137k | $137k | 5 | 5 |
How we counted
- Every number comes from FDE job postings that our curator checks are still open each day. 465 of 734 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.