Deming’s List research · August 2026
What 41 FDE and AI deployment openings reveal.
A hand-checked snapshot of how employers name the role, where the work happens, what they disclose about pay, and why role definition matters more than job-board volume.
01 · Snapshot
The role is narrow. The title is not.
Production ownership plus direct customer deployment is a more stable boundary than the words in the title.
41
Verified public openings
Each linked to an official employer or employer-controlled applicant page.
35
Used “Forward Deployed”
Six adjacent titles qualified on duties rather than name alone.
28
Published a numeric pay range
Range types differed too much for a responsible average.
19
Mentioned onsite work
Based on the visible location field, including on-site variants.
13
Mentioned hybrid work
Office cadence and customer travel remain separate constraints.
7
Mentioned remote work
“Remote” did not always mean anywhere or no travel.
02 · Titles
Exact-title search would miss real deployment work.
The set includes Forward Deployed Engineer, Forward Deployed Software Engineer, Forward Deployed AI Engineer, Forward Deployed ML Engineer, and founding or senior variants. It also contains selected adjacent titles such as Product & Deployment Engineer, Applied AI Engineer, AI Implementation Engineer, Deployment Engineer, and a hands-on Solutions Engineer.
Those adjacent roles are useful only when the public duties show meaningful production-system ownership plus direct customer deployment. A solutions or implementation title is not automatically an FDE; an FDE label is not automatically proof of hands-on engineering.
Recommended taxonomy
Label every opening Exact FDE, Equivalent deployment role, or Adjacent, and explain the ownership boundary. That is more useful than silently inflating the inventory.
03 · Workplace and travel
Location and field work are different variables.
A San Francisco hybrid role can still require customer travel; a remote role can still be geographically restricted.
Published workplace
Visible location fields mentioned on-site work in 19 roles, hybrid work in 13, and remote work in seven. Two roles used mixed or less cleanly classifiable language. Categories reflect the published text and are not a universal workplace taxonomy.
Travel evidence
Fourteen role notes mentioned travel or customer-site field work. Published expectations ranged from “as needed” to roughly 20–40%, some days in customer offices, biweekly on-site work, and multiple weeks per month.
Travel counts come from the current editorial notes, not a guaranteed exhaustive read of every employer description. Unknown means not established by the visible source—not zero.
04 · Compensation
A range without a label can mislead.
Twenty-eight of the 41 roles published a numeric range, but the figures were not directly comparable. Some were base salary; others referenced estimated base, target base, OTE, variable compensation, equity, bonuses, or multiple geographic ranges.
The right editorial rule is to preserve the employer’s qualifier. Do not average a $180,000 base range together with a $500,000 OTE ceiling and call the result “FDE salary.” Equity should remain separate unless the employer supplies a reliable cash value.
For employers
State whether the range is base, target cash, or OTE; separate bonus and equity; and explain location adjustments.
For candidates
Compare guaranteed base, realistic variable pay, equity terms, travel burden, and location—not the largest number on the page.
05 · Hiring implications
Four ways to make the role easier to fill.
Define the production artifact
Name what the engineer will build, deploy, operate, or return to the product—not only whom they will meet.
Separate office cadence from customer travel
Remote eligibility, team office time, customer-site work, and multi-week embedding are distinct constraints.
Label compensation precisely
Make base, OTE, bonus, commission, and equity legible rather than collapsing them into one headline.
Describe ownership after launch
Say who owns stabilization, monitoring, iteration, support, adoption, and feedback into product engineering.
06 · Methodology
How the set was built.
An exact role had to be live on an official employer or employer-controlled applicant page at the visible verification date. The work had to combine meaningful production-code or production-system ownership with direct customer deployment. Title, location, compensation, and dates were transcribed from public sources; missing facts remained missing.
Pure pre-sales, generic consulting, configuration-only implementation, internal-only deployment, stale pages, and title-only matches were excluded from the current published set. The selection is editorial and can reflect source availability, geography, company stage, and judgment.
The current verified FDE jobs page is the source ledger: it links every row directly to the employer and shows the last check. Corrections are welcome.
- 41 verified FDE and AI deployment openingsCurrent public index and official source links.
- Research, inclusion, and correction methodAuthorship, evidence hierarchy, and commercial boundaries.
- Submit a correctionInclude the exact role, field, and authoritative source.
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