As layoffs across technology industry cross over a lakh, position for this engineering job has gone up 700%
Technology industry has cut over a lakh jobs in 2026. One engineering role has done the exact opposite—postings are up 729% in a year, and the pay sits between $170,000 and over $200,000. The job is forward-deployed engineer, or FDE, and right now it might be the only safe seat in the industry. Indeed listings for the role jumped from 643 in April 2025 to 5,330 in April 2026, according to data shared with Business Insider. Anthropic, OpenAI, Stripe, Google Cloud and Palantir are all hiring. McKinsey’s AI arm QuantumBlack is too.
The contrast with the rest of tech is brutal. Layoffs.fyi counts over 115,000 cuts at 150-plus companies this year; Trueup puts the number closer to 148,000.
