97 Japanese FDE job ads read line by line: most top out at ¥10M–¥20M, and only a quarter require AI or LLM experience

FDE Consulting, a Tokyo firm that itself hires FDEs, collected every Japan-based role with Forward Deployed Engineer, フォワードデプロイド or Deployment Strategist in the title that was open on November 4, 2026, from company career pages and ATS boards like Greenhouse, Ashby, Lever, HERP and Wantedly. It found 97 openings at 65 companies, but only 53 listed a salary.

Of the 48 ads with an upper bound, 34 topped out between ¥10M and ¥20M a year, and 11 went to ¥20M or more. Sierra Japan's forward deployed infrastructure engineer role led at ¥22M–¥47M, followed by CADDi (¥12M–¥30M) and Sansan (¥11.52M–¥29.17M). The authors warn the figures aren't directly comparable: 29 of the 53 include fixed overtime pay, usually 45 hours a month, and 14 fold in bonuses. None of the nine ads the authors classed as cloud platforms listed pay, and roles at OpenAI, Google, Databricks and Palantir in Japan also came without a number.

Reading the 88 engineering ads, 57 require hands-on development experience and 49 require direct customer work, but just 23 make building or deploying AI and LLM systems mandatory, and 17 require English. Fourteen don't require software engineering experience, which the authors read as companies using the FDE title for both customer-process roles and production-code roles.

For candidates, the takeaway is to read the must-have section rather than the title, and to normalize pay for overtime and bonuses before comparing. For engineers without AI project history, the data suggests Japan's FDE market is more open than it looks.