Korean companies posting FDE jobs rose 13.8x this year, Wanted Lab says, as it plans an FDE recruiting fair in Seoul
Data from Korean hiring platform Wanted Lab shows the number of companies advertising Forward Deployed Engineer roles grew 13.8-fold in January to September 2026 versus a year earlier, with FDE positions up 14.5-fold. Wanted will host an FDE Recruiting Carnival in Seoul on November 18 and plans an FDE Academy for engineers switching into the role.
South Korea's demand for forward deployed engineers is climbing fast. According to hiring platform Wanted Lab, cited by the Korea Economic Daily (Hankyung) on October 26, the number of companies that posted FDE job ads between January and September 2026 was 13.8 times higher than in the same period last year, and the number of FDE positions they opened grew 14.5 times.
The paper describes FDEs as engineers who go on site with client companies, work out the problem, build the software and AI systems to solve it, and then verify and improve them in real use. It notes that the role is still unfamiliar in Korea: employers ask for different skills and scopes, so engineers struggle to know what to learn and companies struggle to find the right people.
To close that gap, Wanted Lab will hold an "FDE Recruiting Carnival" on November 18 at Lotte World Tower in Jamsil, Seoul, with MakinaRocks, Sionic AI, VESSL AI and Xenon among the participating hiring companies. It is aimed at 100 developers with at least two years of experience who want to change jobs, offers one-on-one coffee chats with interested employers, and takes applications on Wanted's event page until November 16. Wanted also plans an "FDE Academy" to help developers move into the role.
For FDE candidates, this is one of the clearest data points yet that the role has spread well beyond US AI labs. Korean AI startups are now hiring FDEs in volume, and the event is a direct route to those teams.
Source: www.hankyung.com