FROM: A10X FIELD DESKTO: FORWARD DEPLOYED ENGINEERSRE: BRIEF №13 · THREE MOVESDATE: NOVEMBER 2026 · WK 46
Three items this week, each read from the employer's own careers site on 5 November. Salesforce has 60 Forward Deployed Engineer postings, files 55 of them under Sales, and prints pay by a level the posting does not name. AWS hires FDEs into five different teams under one title. And Wonderful closed its FDE roles in three countries in one week.
compSalesforce: 60 FDE postings, 51 outside the US, and one posting that spans $89K to $288K
What changed. On 5 November Salesforce's careers site listed 60 open Forward Deployed Engineer postings, 43 of them posted since 1 October. 51 are outside the US, in 26 countries: Dublin has 7, Italy 6, and Mexico City, Sao Paulo, Tokyo, Riyadh and Auckland one each. 55 of the 60 are filed under Sales, 5 under Software. Where Salesforce prints pay, it depends on the experience the posting asks for. 2+ years (MTS): $117K to $177K base, $141K to $194K in San Francisco and New York. 3+ years, the main posting, which covers several levels: $89K to $288K, up to $317K in California, New York and the Boston, Chicago, Seattle and DC metros. 8+ years (Lead MTS): $173K to $260K, $208K to $286K in San Francisco and New York. Outside the US only Italy (EUR 70K to 118K) and Toronto (CAD 95K to 145K) print pay.
Why it matters to an FDE. A range that wide is several levels in one posting, and the interview decides which one you get. So the number that matters is set before you ever talk pay. The filing matters too: 27 of the 60 say customer-facing delivery experience is "a requirement, not a nice-to-have", and 40 expect about 25% travel. This is a job sold and measured next to the deal.
Before the first technical round, ask the recruiter which level you are interviewing for and the range for that level. If you have run delivery for a customer, put it in the first lines of your resume, not the last. Salesforce's roles, with their cities and direct apply links, are on the live board; a posting can cover several seats, so 60 is postings, not headcount.hiringAWS hires FDEs into five teams under one title
What changed. On 5 November amazon.jobs listed 57 FDE engineering postings. Sorted by team: Core FDE, 32: you build and ship agents inside the customer, and 24 of the 32 ask for agentic and spec-driven development; the Tokyo roles ask for business-level Japanese. US Government, 9, in Arlington and Denver, and every one asks for a TS/SCI clearance. Model customization, 5: all five ask for LLM post-training and distributed training on multi-node clusters (PyTorch, CUDA, Megatron, FSDP, Trainium, Neuron). Security FDE, 5, in Dallas and London, where threat modeling and security code review come first. And a second team called Forward Deployment Engineering, 6, in New York, Seattle and East Palo Alto, where 5 of the 6 ask for 5+ years and for leading or mentoring engineers.
Why it matters to an FDE. Same title, five different jobs. Without a clearance, the government track is closed to you. Model customization is a training job, and its interview will test that. Core FDE is the one most of you are preparing for, and it is also the biggest. If you prepare for "the AWS FDE interview", you prepare for a job that does not exist.
Open the posting and read the team name and the first three basic qualifications before the pay. Pick the track you can pass and prepare for that one. AWS's roles, with pay by city where AWS prints it, are on the live board.marketWonderful closed its FDE roles in Spain, Portugal and Vietnam in one week
What changed. Last week we counted 39 Wonderful FDE requisitions in 38 markets (read 28 October). On 5 November there were 36 in 35 markets: Spain, Portugal and Vietnam had closed. Zurich dropped its C2 German requirement and now asks for a good level of English and "a preference for fluent German or French". Its whole board is down to 120 open roles, and still none publishes pay. Our own board moves the same way: 372 FDE roles in its default view on 2 November, 355 on 5 November.
Why it matters to an FDE. A posting you saved last week can be gone this week, and a requirement that ruled you out can be relaxed. Both happened at one company in seven days. Waiting for one more weekend of preparation is how good roles close on you.
If a role fits, apply this week and prepare between the application and the first call. Re-read the postings that ruled you out on language or location, because Zurich's changed. The Wonderful dossier is updated to 4 November at a10x.dev/loops/wonderful.The through-line
A job title tells you little. The level tells you the pay, the team tells you the work, and the date tells you whether it is still open. Read all three before you prepare.
See you next Monday.
THE A10X FIELD DESK
Sources: Salesforce careers: Forward Deployed Engineer search, read 2026-11-05; amazon.jobs: "forward deployed" search, read 2026-11-05; Wonderful jobs board (Ashby), read 2026-11-05; A10X dossier: Wonderful, re-verified 2026-11-04; A10X live FDE job board, read 2026-11-05; Free 60-minute FDE case; FDE case kit (GitHub).
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