ARKONE
$193K
Median base pay for FDE roles that publish salary
Plank
5,200+
US FDE postings in the first seven months of 2026
Lightcast
$280–320K
Anthropic's own range for the role
Anthropic careers

The work

What a forward deployed engineer ships.

Support agents

Agents that clear tickets and hand the hard ones to a person.

MCP servers

Claude and GPT, wired into the client's CRM, ERP and databases.

Sub-agents

One coordinator, many workers, one finished result.

Production rollouts

Shipped inside the client's own stack, with review and rollback.

An engineer working remotely on an AI agent architecture

Why the ArkOne network

Real companies. Real production. Your desk.

  • Remote

    Work from where you are. Each project states the hours it needs.

  • Contract or full-time

    Projects come on both. You choose what you raise your hand for.

  • Certification optional

    Matching runs on your profile and CV. Some clients ask for Claude certification, and ArkOne offers the exam if you choose to sit it.

Join the network

Questions

What is a forward deployed engineer?

A software engineer who works inside a client's organisation to put a product into real use. In AI, that means building and shipping agents on the client's own systems.

How is it different from a solutions engineer?

A solutions engineer supports a sale. A forward deployed engineer owns the system working in production after it.

How much does a forward deployed engineer earn?

Across postings that publish pay, the median base is about $193,000; Anthropic lists $280,000 to $320,000. These are market figures for US full-time roles, not what a given project through ArkOne pays.

Do I need a Claude certification?

No. Matching runs on your profile and CV. Some clients ask for certification, and members who choose to can sit Anthropic's Claude Certified Architect exam through ArkOne.

Is work guaranteed?

No. Projects depend on what clients need. Joining puts you where ArkOne looks when they do.

Ship AI agents. Join the network.

Complete your profile to get matched.