Only 9–19% of FDE job ads allow remote work, and remote still means visiting customers
An FDE Times analysis published 12 October 2026 finds two trackers put the remote-friendly share of FDE ads at about 9% and 19%, and shows that even remote-labelled roles often require substantial customer travel.
FDE Times compared two hiring datasets and concluded that fewer than one in five Forward Deployed Engineer ads allow remote work. Rung’s October 2026 snapshot of 402 public ATS ads found about 19% remote-friendly, while FDE Pulse counted only 98 of 1,086 open ads (9%) as allowing remote work in April 2026. In Rung’s set, 80% of ads still mentioned travel or on-site work.
Individual postings make the pattern clearer. Cohere’s FDE Agentic Platform ad is remote-friendly but asks for up to 20–40% of time on site with customers and partners. Other ads range from Databricks London (customer visits roughly every 4–8 weeks) to Factory roles that expect five days a week in the office plus frequent customer visits. For an FDE, “remote” usually means away from the employer’s office, not away from the customer.
That matters for anyone filtering by the remote label. Air-gapped or high-security customer environments force on-site debugging, and Valletta Software warns that understated travel is a common reason FDEs quit in their first year. Candidates should convert travel percentages into days per month and ask interviewers how many days a typical FDE spent with customers last month before accepting an offer.
Source: fdetimes.net