It's one of the first questions most aspiring FDEs ask: Do Forward Deployed Engineers actually work remotely? The answer is sometimes but don't assume every role offers remote work. Unlike many traditional software engineering jobs, an FDE's work often involves collaborating directly with customers, so the amount of remote work depends on the company, the customer, and the type of deployment.

For example, Databricks offers some India-based FDE roles with remote or hybrid flexibility, while companies like Palantir and OpenAI generally expect engineers to spend significant time on-site with customers.

It's also worth noting that some companies advertise nearly identical positions under titles like Applied AI Engineer or Solutions Engineer, which often come with less travel and greater remote flexibility. In other words, there's no universal rule; it all depends on the employer and the responsibilities of the role.

Quick summary if you're short on time:

• No single answer applies across the board; it varies by company and by title.
• More remote-friendly: Databricks (India), Applied AI Engineer roles in general, a handful of AI-native startups, and PostHog (fully remote, by design).
• Less remote-friendly: Palantir, OpenAI, and most defense or government-facing roles.
• The title itself is a signal "FDE" tends to mean more travel, "Applied AI Engineer" tends to mean less.
• What actually decides it: whether the customer's systems are airgapped, how comfortable they are with remote work, and which stage of the project you're in.
• If remote work is the priority: look at Applied AI Engineer listings, hybrid-friendly companies, and roles further along in their lifecycle rather than fresh discovery work.

Why This Isn't a One-Word Answer

The whole idea of "forward deployed" assumes you're physically near the customer. That's not a coincidence the phrase comes from military language, where forward-deployed forces operate close to the action instead of sitting back at base. 

We've written separately about why Forward Deployed Engineers travel if you want the full reasoning security requirements, airgapped systems, the trust that comes from just being there in person. I won't repeat all of that here. This piece is really about where the exceptions show up, and how you'd go about finding one.

Here's the short version, though: those reasons for showing up in person don't apply everywhere equally. A defense contractor running an airgapped network genuinely can't let you log in from home. A cloud-hosted SaaS customer often doesn't care either way.

The Hybrid Reality Most FDEs Actually Live In

Treating this as "fully remote" versus "always on a plane" isn't quite right, either. Most FDE jobs land somewhere in between a normal baseline of remote or in-office work, interrupted by stretches of on-site time tied to specific milestones in a project.

OpenAI's own postings describe something like three days a week in-office, plus travel on top of that for customer work. Anthropic is even less consistent; it depends entirely on the account. Some customers want their FDE at headquarters or in a secure facility regularly; others are perfectly happy running the whole relationship over video calls.

So if you're asking "do FDEs work remotely," the honest answer for most roles isn't yes or no it's "depends which week, and which client."

Is Chasing a Remote FDE Role Actually a Good Idea?

Before you start filtering job boards for "remote only," it's worth thinking through what you'd actually be trading.

What you gain:

• A schedule you can plan around, instead of one that gets rearranged by a flight.
• Something that's sustainable for years, not just exciting for the first six months.
• A wider pool of companies to apply to, since remote roles aren't tied to a specific city.

What you give up:

• Some of the flashiest, highest-profile engagements tend to sit with companies that still want people on-site.
• Trust takes longer to build over Zoom than it does sitting next to someone at least early in a relationship.
• A few of the best-paying tracks, especially at Palantir and OpenAI, are still fairly hub-anchored, so leaning hard into "remote-only" might mean ruling those out.

None of that makes remote-friendly FDE work a consolation prize. It's just a different set of tradeoffs, and it's better to pick it on purpose than stumble into it.

Which Companies Are Actually Remote-Friendly?

For more detail on what each of these companies is actually looking for, top companies hiring Forward Deployed Engineers goes deeper into the full list.

Why "Applied AI Engineer" Often Means More Remote Work

Here's a pattern that's easy to miss if you're only scanning job titles: the title itself tells you something about how remote-friendly the job is, even between companies doing basically the same work.

"Forward Deployed Engineer" the label Palantir, OpenAI, Databricks, Salesforce, and Microsoft use usually comes with a heavier, more variable travel expectation. Some listings go as high as 50%.

"Applied AI Engineer" - used by Anthropic, plenty of AI startups, and Google Cloud's "Generative AI FDE" usually comes with less.

That gap holds up even when the actual day-to-day work looks nearly identical. It seems to reflect how a company thinks about customer-facing AI work more broadly, not just a branding choice. 

If you want a fuller comparison including how pay differs between the two tracks, Forward Deployed Engineer vs Applied AI Engineer covers it in detail.

What Actually Decides Whether a Role Can Be Remote

A few concrete things determine this, beyond just the company name on the offer letter:

• Whether the customer's systems are airgapped or otherwise cut off from the outside world. No remote-work policy beats a network that was deliberately built without internet access.
  
  
• How comfortable that particular customer is with remote work in the first place. Some enterprise buyers, especially in more conservative industries, still expect someone in the room as a sign they're being taken seriously whether or not it's technically necessary.
  
  
• What stage the engagement is at. Discovery and the early build usually need more in-person time than the steady-state monitoring that comes later. The same role can shift from mostly on-site to mostly remote as a project matures.
  
  
• Industry-specific rules. Government, defense, and some financial services work comes with data-residency and access requirements that push hard toward on-site.
  
  
• Where you're actually based. As we covered in Forward Deployed Engineer vs Cloud Engineer, FDE roles in India supporting North American or European clients are increasingly set up as remote by default mostly because flying someone in constantly was never realistic in the first place.

If You Actually Want a Remote FDE Role, Here's What to Do

A few practical moves, if remote work matters more to you than anything else on this list:

1. Go after "Applied AI Engineer" listings first, at companies where both titles exist. The skills are basically the same, this is really just about which postings you prioritize.
   
   
2. Look specifically for companies that say remote out loud, like Databricks' India roles. A company's general reputation for being remote-friendly doesn't always carry over to its FDE postings specifically, so check at the role level.
   
   
3. Actually read the travel language in the posting. Our job description breakdown explains how to decode those percentages and a listing that's suspiciously silent on travel, while leaning hard on customer-facing language, is worth a direct question before you apply.
   
   
4. Ask about the specific account, not the company's general stance. Remote-friendliness swings by engagement, not just by employer, and a hiring manager's honest answer will tell you more than anything in the posting.
   
   
5. Consider roles serving a different region than the one you live in. India-based engineers supporting US or European clients often end up more genuinely remote than a domestic role would be, simply because nobody's flying someone across the world every other week.

None of this guarantees a fully remote offer; those are still the exception, for the reasons above but it tilts the odds meaningfully in that direction.

Will This Get More Remote-Friendly Over Time?

Probably, in some places. As AI tooling shrinks how much on-site time a given project actually needs, companies whose customers are already comfortable with remote work SaaS vendors, cloud-native startups have more room to loosen up on travel.

That's unlikely to reach defense or government work in the same way, though. Those constraints are structural physical network isolation, security clearances not something better tooling fixes.  

It's a widening gap: the parts of the market that are already remote-friendly get more so, and the hub-anchored parts stay exactly where they are, for reasons that have nothing to do with how good the AI tools get.

TL;DR

• It varies significantly by company and title no universal answer applies
• More remote-friendly: Databricks (India remote options), Applied AI Engineer roles generally, some AI-native startups, PostHog (fully remote by design)
• Less remote-friendly / hub-anchored: Palantir, OpenAI, defense and government-facing FDE roles
• Key distinction: "FDE" titles skew toward higher travel expectations; "Applied AI Engineer" titles at the same companies often skew more remote
• What actually determines it: customer comfort with remote engagement, whether systems are airgapped, and which phase of the engagement you're in
• For candidates specifically wanting remote work: target Applied AI Engineer titles, hybrid-model companies, and post-launch/steady-state roles over discovery-heavy ones.