Forward Deployed Engineer Salary Explorer
A filterable table and honest range estimator. Every figure is a reported range with its source, never asserted.
The FDE salary web is full of unverified numbers.
Every figure below is a reported range with its source named inline. We did not include a single number we could not trace back to a real filing or a named aggregator, and we left gaps where the public data was too thin, rather than invent a figure to fill them. Verify against the primary source before you rely on any of this.
Reported FDE compensation, by source
Filter by company tier or region. Every row names its exact source; click through to verify it yourself.
| Company tier | Region | Metric | Range | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Palantir (the role's originator, most public data) | United States (other / national) | Base salary, H1B/LCA disclosure (all levels, national)n = 21 | $135,000 - $250,000median $150,000 | H1B/LCA disclosure data (h1bdata.info)2024 filings, pulled 2026-07-21 |
| Palantir (the role's originator, most public data) | United States (other / national) | Total compensation, self-reported (all levels, national) | $171,000 - $295,000median $211,000 | Levels.fyi (self-reported)updated 2026-06-23 |
| Palantir (the role's originator, most public data) | United States (other / national) | Total pay, self-reported (all levels, national)n = 429 | $124,513 - $292,000median $177,381 | Glassdoor (self-reported)pulled 2026-07-21 |
| Palantir (the role's originator, most public data) | New York City | Average total pay, self-reported | $154,686 | Glassdoor, New York City (self-reported)pulled 2026-07-21 |
| Palantir (the role's originator, most public data) | Palo Alto, CA | Average total pay, self-reported | $177,381 | Glassdoor, Palo Alto (self-reported)pulled 2026-07-21 |
| Palantir (the role's originator, most public data) | Washington, DC | Average total pay, self-reported | $190,706 | Glassdoor, Washington DC (self-reported)pulled 2026-07-21 |
| Palantir (the role's originator, most public data) | London, UK | Average total pay, self-reportedn = 59 | £24,640 - £77,129median £36,197 | Glassdoor, London (self-reported)pulled 2026-07-21, sample dated Feb 2026 |
| AY Automate placement (embedded engineer) | United States (other / national) | AY Automate placement price (not a salary, what a company pays) | $60,000 | AY Automate's own published pricinglive pricing page |
United States (other / national): 21 disclosed 2024 filings for the exact job title "Forward Deployed Engineer." This is real base-salary data companies are legally required to file, not a self-reported estimate, but it only covers H1B-sponsored hires and base salary, not total comp.
United States (other / national): Self-reported total comp (base + bonus + equity) for the "Forward Deployed Software Engineer" title. Directional, not audited.
United States (other / national): 429 self-reported entries. Glassdoor's own 25th-75th percentile band on base pay is $124,513 to $198,096; total pay (incl. additional pay) is estimated at $191K-$292K.
New York City: Single average figure as published by Glassdoor for this location.
London, UK: This figure looks low for the role and the sample is small (59 entries). We are showing it exactly as Glassdoor publishes it, not smoothing it, because an oddly-low outlier from a real source is more honest than a plausible-looking number we made up. Verify against a live London posting before relying on it.
United States (other / national): This is AY Automate's own live starting price to place a forward deployed engineer, nearshore rate, published on our pricing page. It is what a company pays for the placement, not a salary paid to an individual, so it is not directly comparable to the rows above.
Honest range estimator
Pick your inputs. You get a range positioned inside the sourced data above, with the method and source named, never a single confident-sounding number.
Reported range
$163,750 - $204,000 / year
Positioned within the reported range for United States (other / national) (base salary, h1b/lca disclosure (all levels, national)), partitioned by experience band. The range itself is sourced; the position within it is our estimate, not a separately verified per-level figure.
H1B/LCA disclosure data (h1bdata.info)Where the public data runs out
Glassdoor shows a small sample (12 entries) with currency formatting that was unclear enough that we could not verify it cleanly against a second source. Rather than guess at a conversion, we left it out.
No aggregator returned a usable sample size for this exact job title in Singapore as of this writing.
These companies do not appear to have a separately aggregated "Forward Deployed Engineer" compensation entry on Levels.fyi or Glassdoor distinct from general Software Engineer or Member of Technical Staff titles. Several newly-published sites claim specific frontier-lab FDE figures with no visible source; we are not repeating those numbers here.
Why FDE comp varies this much
The gap between a $150,000 median H1B filing and a $295,000 reported total comp figure is not a contradiction. It is three real variables stacking on top of each other, plus a sourcing problem the rest of the search results have not solved.
Seniority
The role spans someone doing their first embedded deployment to someone running a seven-figure account. That is a wide band in any engineering discipline, not unique to FDE.
Company and scope
Palantir originated the model, embedding roughly 120 forward deployed engineers inside JPMorgan starting in 2009. Compensation at the role's originator with venture-scale backing is a different market than the same title at a startup, an agency, or a mid-market vendor.
The two-judgments premium
The role requires technical judgment (agent loops, tool use, evaluation-driven development) and commercial judgment (mapping a real workflow, earning trust, explaining outcomes to a non-technical stakeholder) in the same person. Engineers strong on both are rarer than engineers strong on either alone, and that scarcity is a real driver at the top of the range.
Where AY Automate fits
We do not set FDE market salaries and are not going to pretend otherwise. What we do is place embedded engineers through forward deployed engineer placement, at published pricing rather than a number quoted only after a sales call. For the full 30-day methodology behind how we ramp an FDE into your stack, see the FDE in 30 Days roadmap. For the full breakdown of what the role is and when to use one, read our forward deployed engineer guide.
Frequently Asked Questions
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