State of the wave

The Forward Deployed Hiring Tracker

Who's hiring embedded talent, across which functions, and who actually staffs the recruiting side. Filter by function or search a company. No competitor in this space keeps a maintained asset like this.

Snapshot Mid-2026Updated Jul 11, 2026How we built this →

Methodology. 40 distinct “Forward Deployed” postings across 38 companies, from direct ATS boards (Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby) and the fwddeploy.com aggregator — deliberately not raw LinkedIn counts, which inflate with reposts. The 11-company staffing check reads each company's own careers page. A sample, not a census.

Search a company

Function

Where the title has spread

13 functions shown.

Engineering

Palantir · Anthropic · xAI · OpenAI · Google DeepMind · Databricks

Product Manager

Scale AI · Salesforce · Adobe · Tailor · Fractional AI · LotusFlare

Data Scientist

Scale AI · Surge AI · Braze · SAP

Analyst

Booz Allen Hamilton · Twenty · Reflow · Electric Twin

Consultant

Deloitte (×2) · Accenture · CGI

Recruiter

Sxaler · ElevenLabs · OpenAI

Design

Blitzy

Finance / Accounting

Forward Deployed Accountant / Banker

FloQast · Rogo

Banking (eng)

LGT Bank · Barclays

Legal

Forward Deployed Lawyer

Eudia · Clifford Chance

Science / R&D

Phylo · UiPath

Executive

Forward Deployed CTO, $300K–$450K

Tribe AI

Marketing

Marketing Technology Manager, Forward Deployed

AWS

Who staffs the recruiting side

11 companies checked against their own careers pages — not secondhand claims. 11 shown.

Companies checked for a dedicated in-house Forward Deployed recruiter, with evidence and a confidence level for each.
Company	In-house FDE recruiter?	Evidence	Confidence
OpenAI	Dedicated in-house	“Recruiter, Forward Deployed Engineering” live across Remote-US / NYC / London / Singapore; function build-out announced publicly by Colin Jarvis.	VERIFIED
ElevenLabs	Dedicated in-house	“Forward Deployed Engineering Recruiter,” directly fetched, live. JD: “not a conventional recruiter role.”	VERIFIED
Databricks	Partial	“Sr. Recruiter, GTM – Field Engineering” (India) names FDEs as one of three mandates. Regionally scoped.	CORROBORATED
Palantir	Historically strong, not by current title	Current posting is generalist “Talent Strategist.” Strong indirect evidence: named commercial recruiters, ex-Palantir leads, and the no-degree Meritocracy Fellowship pipeline.	CORROBORATED
Anthropic	No dedicated title	Generalist Recruiter postings; but CCO Paul Smith publicly committed to growing the Applied AI team fivefold in-house — quote via CNBC, which 403'd on direct fetch (corroborated, not directly read).	CORROBORATED
Salesforce	No dedicated title	No dedicated posting; VP Ben Hickin has an on-record hiring philosophy. Primary page bot-blocked (403).	CORROBORATED
Intercom	None found	General technical-recruiting postings appear expired. Team-composition detail from FDE lead Diego Ballona.	CORROBORATED
Google DeepMind	None found	Generalist Talent Acquisition postings only; no named-employee sourcing statement found.	CORROBORATED
Scale AI	None found	Generic “Technical Recruiter” roles cover the whole engineering org.	VERIFIED
Glean	No evidence found	Only general Technical Recruiter / Recruiting Coordinator contract roles — no dedicated FDE recruiter found either way.	CORROBORATED
Cresta	None found	“Head of Global Talent Acquisition” + general technical recruiters cover FDE broadly.	VERIFIED

Where it clusters

By industry and geography, from the same sample. US-heavy, but genuinely global.

By industry

AI-native labs & infra
Anthropic, OpenAI, xAI, Mistral, DeepMind, Scale, Databricks
Enterprise SaaS retrofitting the model
Salesforce, Asana, Twilio, UiPath, Genesys
Big-4 / SI consultancies
Deloitte, Accenture, CGI
Fintech & banking
Ramp, Rogo, LGT, Barclays
Defense & government
Palantir US Gov, Vannevar Labs, Booz Allen
Legal-tech & healthcare
Eudia, Clifford Chance, and scattered health

By geography

US (heaviest)
SF Bay Area, NYC
UK
A real London cluster
Europe
Zürich, Munich, Milan
Asia-Pacific
Singapore, Japan

Should you hire in-house or use an agency?

One honest heuristic, and what the practitioners actually doing this hiring say about it.

▸ In-house or agency?

Has your in-house team closed a senior AI FDE hire in the last six months?

Rule of thumb from KORE1, a staffing firm — vendor-sourced, so weight it accordingly. Concrete enough to be useful.

We update this as the wave moves.

Subscribers get the changes — new companies, new functions, claims checked — the month they happen.