FDE Dispatch: Forward Deployed Engineer requirements index, October 25, 2026

Files
  fde-skills-2026-10-25.csv   one row per posting, one 0/1 column per requirement
  fde-skills-2026-10-25.json  same rows plus method, keyword patterns and totals

Used on https://fdedispatch.com/forward-deployed-engineer-skills/

Population
  Engineer-title postings counted in the October 24, 2026 postings snapshot
  (fde-postings-2026-10-24.csv in this folder), internships excluded: 565
  postings. FDE Dispatch re-fetched each posting's full text from its public
  Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby or Workday board on October 25, 2026. 2 postings
  had closed, leaving 563 postings from 115 employers. Deployment strategist
  and FDE management titles are not included.

Method
  A posting counts for a requirement when its text matches at least one of
  that requirement's patterns below, once per posting. Before matching, three
  kinds of text are removed: 'About <employer>' / 'About us' / 'Who we are'
  sections (up to the next role heading, max 2,000 characters), sentences with
  employer boilerplate (headquartered, our mission, equal opportunity,
  benefits, backed by, founded in and similar), and sentences that start with
  the employer's name followed by is a/an/the, offers, provides, delivers,
  powers, helps or builds. Sentences end at . ! ? or a line break; degree
  abbreviations (B.S., M.S., B.A., M.A., Ph.D., B.Sc., M.Sc.) do not end a
  sentence. Employer share = employers with at least one
  matching posting / 115.

Years of experience
  The first 'N years ... experience' phrase in the posting (N from 1 to 20;
  for a range such as 3-5 years, the lower number). Column years_min_stated.

Requirements and patterns (case-insensitive unless marked)
  python          Python: 429 postings (76.2%), 85 employers (73.9%)
                  match any: \bpython\b
  customer_facing Customer-facing work (phrase match): 417 postings (74.1%), 84 employers (73.0%)
                  match any: \b(?:customer|client)[- ]facing\b  |  \bdirectly with (?:our |your |the )?(?:customers?|clients?)\b
  apis            APIs or integrations: 393 postings (69.8%), 93 employers (80.9%)
                  match any: \bAPIs?\b  |  \bintegrations?\b  |  \bintegrat(?:e|ing) (?:with|into)\b
  travel          Travel: 331 postings (58.8%), 52 employers (45.2%)
                  match any: \btravel(?:s|ing|ling|ed)?\b
                  removed first: \btravel (?:stipend|reimbursement|insurance|allowance|assistance)s?\b
  ts_js           TypeScript or JavaScript (incl. Node.js): 318 postings (56.5%), 47 employers (40.9%)
                  match any: \btypescript\b  |  \bjavascript\b  |  \bnode\.?js\b
  llm_genai       LLMs or generative AI: 247 postings (43.9%), 72 employers (62.6%)
                  match any: \bLLMs?\b  |  \blarge language models?\b  |  \bgenerative AI\b  |  \bgen ?AI\b  |  \bfoundation models?\b
  agents          AI agents or agentic systems: 231 postings (41.0%), 71 employers (61.7%)
                  match any: \bagentic\b  |  \bagents?\b
                  removed first: \bAgent Bricks\b  |  our AI agents accelerate your impact  |  \b(?:recruit\w*|staffing|travel|insurance|real estate|change|employment|placement|support|human|customer service|contact center|call center)\s+agents?\b  |  \buser[- ]agent\b
  data_pipelines  Data pipelines or ETL: 203 postings (36.1%), 40 employers (34.8%)
                  match any: \bETL\b  |  \bELT\b  |  \bdata pipelines?\b  |  \bdata engineering\b  |  \bdata integrations?\b
  cloud           AWS, GCP or Azure: 202 postings (35.9%), 43 employers (37.4%)
                  match any: \bAWS\b  |  \bAmazon Web Services\b  |  \bGCP\b  |  \bGoogle Cloud\b  |  \bAzure\b
  java            Java: 135 postings (24.0%), 16 employers (13.9%)
                  match any: \bJava\b(?!\s*Script)
  cs_degree       Computer science degree mentioned: 125 postings (22.2%), 38 employers (33.0%)
                  match any: \b(?:degree|bachelor'?s|B\.?S\.?|B\.?A\.?|master'?s|M\.?S\.?|Ph\.?D)\b[^\n]{0,100}?\bcomputer science\b  |  \bcomputer science\b[^.\n]{0,40}\b(?:degree|bachelor'?s|master'?s)\b  |  \b(?:CS|computer science) degree\b  |  \bdegree in (?:CS|computer science)\b
  rag             RAG, retrieval or vector search: 109 postings (19.4%), 31 employers (27.0%)
                  match any: \bRAG\b  |  \bretrieval\b  |  \bvector (?:database|db|search|store)s?\b  |  \bembeddings\b  |  \bembedding models?\b
  containers      Kubernetes or Docker: 108 postings (19.2%), 44 employers (38.3%)
                  match any: \bkubernetes\b  |  \bk8s\b  |  \bdocker\b
  evals           Evals (LLM or model evaluation): 103 postings (18.3%), 38 employers (33.0%)
                  match any: \bevals?\b  |  \b(?:LLM|model|AI|agent|offline|online|automated)\s+evaluations?\b  |  \bevaluation\s+(?:harness|framework|pipeline|suite|dataset|set|metric|loop|system|tool|infrastructure)s?\b
  startup         Startup or founder experience: 67 postings (11.9%), 25 employers (21.7%)
                  match any: \b(?:experience|background|previously|prior|worked)\b[^.\n]{0,150}\b(?:start-?ups?|early[- ]stage|founders?|founding engineer|founded)\b  |  \b(?:start-?ups?|early[- ]stage|founders?|founding engineer)\b[^.\n]{0,40}\bexperience\b  |  \b(?:have|has|you've|previously) (?:founded|started) (?:a|your own) (?:company|startup|start-up|business)\b
                  removed first: \bexperience the autonomy of a start-?up\b
  sql             SQL: 59 postings (10.5%), 24 employers (20.9%)
                  match any: \bSQL\b
  go              Go (Golang): 40 postings (7.1%), 17 employers (14.8%)
                  match any: \bgolang\b  |  \bGo\b(?=[^.\n]{0,80}(?:Python|Java|Rust|C\+\+|TypeScript|JavaScript|Scala|Kotlin|C#|Ruby|Node|Bash|SQL|Swift|Elixir))  |  (?:Python|Java|Rust|C\+\+|TypeScript|JavaScript|Scala|Kotlin|C#|Ruby|Node|Bash|SQL|Swift|Elixir)[^.\n]{0,80}?\bGo\b
                  removed first: \bGo[- ]to[- ]market\b  |  \bGo[- ]live\b
                  case-sensitive

  years_min_stated: 328 postings (58.3%) state a figure; median 5 years,
                  middle half 4 to 6; 77 employers, employer-once median 5.

Limits
  A mention is not a hard requirement: matches include nice-to-have lists
  and responsibilities. Keyword matching is approximate. FDE Dispatch read a
  sample of matches and non-matches by hand and tightened patterns that
  over-matched (for example 'go live', 'embedding engineers with customers',
  company taglines about agents). Databricks (87) and Palantir (70) supply 157
  of the 563 postings; use the employer share to correct for that. Employers
  that post only on LinkedIn, Indeed or other applicant systems are missing.
  Postings close; check the url before relying on a row. One pull, no
  history yet.

Correction
  October 25, 2026: degree abbreviations such as B.S. were first treated as
  sentence ends, which hid 3 computer science degree mentions (2 Anduril
  Industries postings, 1 Stripe posting). Corrected: 125 postings (22.2%),
  38 employers (33.0%), up from 122 (21.7%) and 36 (31.3%). No other figure
  changed.

Credit
  Free to reuse with credit to FDE Dispatch and a link to the page above.