Do forward deployed engineers travel? What 26 job postings say

Most of the forward deployed postings we read mention travel, and employers state it very differently. Here are the percentages in 26 postings, what the trips involve and what to ask before you say yes.

By The FDE Blog editorial team·Published 23 October 2026·Updated 23 October 2026

Yes, most forward deployed roles involve travel, but the amount depends on the employer. Of the 26 postings we read on October 23, 2026, 21 mention travel and 18 state a percentage. Nine cap it at 50%, five at 25% and two at 40%, Shield AI asks for at least 50%, and one, a neighboring Palantir role, runs to 75%^{1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,14,10,11}. The only 50% minimum is at a defense employer, remote-friendly roles still travel, and some postings say nothing about it.

These are employer statements, not logs of days on the road, and the 26 are not a random sample. They are mostly AI companies hiring now, plus several defense and hardware employers. Not every title is "forward deployed engineer": the set includes managers, a deployment lead, Palantir's Deployment Strategist and Decagon's Agent Deployment Engineer. Read this as a map of what employers write down. Whether the trade-off is worth it is a bigger question, which we take up in is forward deployed engineer a good role.

How much do forward deployed engineers travel?

The common answer is "up to half". Nine postings use 50% as the ceiling and Shield AI uses it as a floor. Five stop at 25%^15,16,4,5,17. Apart from Palantir's Deployment Strategist, a neighboring role that requires 25 to 75%, no posting states a travel cap above 50%. Two come close: Shield AI asks for at least 50%, and OpenAI's Deployment Lead posting says onsite time with customers is often 25-50%, sometimes higher^{1,18,19,20,2,3,21,22,23,8,9}.

Three things stand out. The same employer writes different numbers for different postings: OpenAI's manager posting says up to 25% while its engineer postings say up to 50%, and Palantir's postings for three related roles say up to 25%, 25 to 50% and 25 to 75%^15,1,4,22,9. Seniority gives no clean pattern: Anthropic states 25 to 50% for its London engineer and its New York manager and 25% for its staff engineer^3,21,16. And "up to" is a cap on what you can be asked, not a promise of how much you will travel; Palantir's own posting calls its 25% flexible based on personal preferences⁴.

Figures are as each posting words them, read on October 23, 2026. Postings change, and not every date is recent: OpenAI's government role carries a September 2025 date and Palantir's new-graduate role June 2025, while two other Palantir pages carry posting dates of 2014 and 2022 in their page data.

What does the travel actually involve?

Postings rarely say, but a few give the shape. Harvey describes trips for a significant business need, typically one to three days¹⁴. OpenAI's head of forward deployed engineering described the pattern to The Pragmatic Engineer in August 2025: a couple of days onsite while scoping, then typically a few days a week onsite during delivery, with the building itself typically done at OpenAI offices²⁸. Anthropic's manager posting ties travel to engagement kickoffs and the team's highest-priority accounts²¹.

At the heavy end, Shield AI describes frequent domestic and international trips with multi-week deployments⁸. Mesodyne sends its engineer to military exercises and austere field sites, asks for a trip debrief on return, and puts the engineer on lab and assembly work at its Massachusetts base between trips¹⁷.

Some hybrid employers pair travel with an office requirement. OpenAI's engineer postings expect three days a week in the office and up to 50% travel¹. They do not say how the two fit together, so ask.

The reasons employers give are mostly about being where the work is. Google describes the role as establishing the first customer user journeys for its largest customers at their sites², and Anthropic's postings say to travel to build in person with customers³. The Pragmatic Engineer also reports a former Palantir FDE saying he was on an Airbus final assembly line, and that his peers worked in similarly unconventional settings²⁸. For the other side of a deployment, why customer AI pilots stall, see why AI pilots fail.

Can a forward deployed engineer work remotely or avoid travel?

A remote home base does not mean no travel. Cohere's US posting is listed as remote and anticipates 20 to 40% travel to customers and partners⁶. ElevenLabs lists a remote US role and says to expect regular travel for customer onsites¹⁰. Figma allows remote work from the US and describes travel as periodic¹¹. Shield AI lists remote among its locations while asking for at least 50%⁸. GitLab's remote staff FDE posting is the one remote-listed role we read that says nothing about travel²⁷.

Silence is not a promise either. Ramp's New York posting from October 22 states no travel figure, while its AI Solutions posting asks for willingness to travel up to about 50%^24,23. Replit's and GitLab's postings state none, and Decagon's Agent Deployment Engineer posting says the company is in-office and gives no travel figure^26,27,25. Treat a missing figure as a question for the recruiter, not an answer.

What changes when the customer site is secure, air-gapped or needs a clearance?

NIST defines an air gap as an interface between two systems that are not physically connected, where any logical connection is not automated and data moves only manually, under human control²⁹. It is our inference, not something the postings state, that work behind such a boundary is often done by someone who is physically there. The Pragmatic Engineer's account of Palantir FDEs working in air-gapped settings points the same way²⁸, and Shield AI lists experience with offline or air-gapped operating environments among the experience it looks for⁸.

Clearances appear in a handful of postings, worded differently:

• ConductorAI requires an active DoD Top Secret/SCI clearance at the time of hire and US citizenship, with up to 40% travel⁷.
• OpenAI's government role lists an active TS/SCI clearance or equivalent among the things it looks for²⁰.
• Shield AI lists an active or prior clearance, or eligibility to obtain one when a program or customer requires it, among its preferred qualifications⁸.
• Palantir's UK government new-graduate role asks for active or eligible DV UK clearance, work inside a facility as a lone worker, and sole British nationality³⁰.
• Mesodyne asks candidates to meet the security, background and credentialing requirements for unescorted access to military installations¹⁷.

US contractor rules limit when an employer can start a clearance for someone it has not yet hired. Under 32 CFR 117.10, a contractor may request an investigation before the start date when the new hire needs access to classified information from day one, provided it has made a written employment commitment that the candidate accepted in writing, with employment starting within 45 days of eligibility being granted. Requests also may not be used to build a cache of cleared employees³¹. Our reading, not the regulation's wording: a posting that requires an active clearance at hire is effectively closed to people without one, while "eligible" or "obtainable" wording suggests the employer starts the process once an offer is accepted. The postings do not say how long that takes and we have no reliable figure, so ask.

How far can you trust the travel numbers?

We found two third-party tallies, and both come from companies selling something else. Webfuse, which sells AI agent tooling, says it collected 102 FDE postings on October 7, 2026; 52 state a percentage, from 20% to 75%, with a median of 40%¹². Its article is dated October 6, and we did not check its sample against the underlying postings. Bloomberry, which sells company technology-adoption and hiring data to sales teams, analyzed about 1,000 postings supplied by a jobs-data provider and says 68% of FDE roles require travel. Its article was published in November 2025 and updated in January 2026. Its text gives 30 to 50% for builder-style roles and its comparison table says 50 to 75% is common, and we found no explanation of how it counted travel¹³. Treat both as indicative. In our 26 postings, 50% is the most common cap and only Palantir's Deployment Strategist runs as high as 75%.

What should you ask before you accept?

Put these to the hiring manager, and ask a current team member too if you can. Get the answers to the first three in writing.

1. How much did the team actually travel over the last 12 months, and what was its busiest quarter?
2. Is the percentage a cap, a target or a minimum, and does it apply per person or per team?
3. Are trips one to three days or multi-week deployments?
4. Who decides where you go, and can you decline a trip or an account?
5. Does the office requirement still apply in the weeks around travel?
6. Who books and pays, what is the expense or per diem policy, and does travel time count as work time?
7. Will you work in secure or air-gapped sites, and what clearance, background check, citizenship or visa rule applies? Who starts it, and how long has it taken for others?

If travel is the main thing you are weighing, set it beside scope, growth and pay in our look at whether FDE is a good role.

How we edited this. The FDE Blog editorial team wrote and edited this note. Each factual claim carries a numbered footnote to the source listed above. How we source