FDE Times tracker counts 440 open FDE roles, led by Databricks and Palantir

FDE Times has published its first FDE hiring report, built from the Greenhouse, Ashby and Lever careers boards of companies that hire forward deployed engineers. It counted 440 open roles on 9 October 2026 across 47 companies, though it notes the jump from 318 on 7 October came from tracking 35 more boards, not from new hiring. Leaving those out, open roles fell by 9 as 12 postings closed and 3 new ones appeared.

Databricks had 125 open roles and Palantir 109, followed by OpenAI (30), Scale AI (16) and Cohere (13). Cursor and ElevenLabs had 11 each, Cresta 10, and Chalk and Notion 9 each. Classic Forward Deployed Engineer titles make up 65% of roles, with deployment strategists at 14%. Only 9% of openings are early-career.

Python appears in 74% of postings and AI agents in 58%. North America holds 60% of roles, with New York, London and Washington, D.C. the top cities, and 24% are marked remote or remote-friendly. Across 179 US postings that list pay, the median midpoint of the base range is $216,000.

For job seekers, the takeaway is that demand is concentrated at a few large employers, mid-level experience is the sweet spot, and Python plus agent-building skills are close to table stakes.