Scale AI
1 open Forward Deployed Engineer role at Scale AI. Curated with comp bands.
Comp on the board: $240K–$400K TC.
On the board since Jun 2026 · still hiring
Our take
Why Scale AI
Unusual breadth — defense and Fortune 500 under one roof — and a clearance path that pays a premium.
- FDE type
- True forward-deployed
- Travel
- High
- Comp
- Competitive
- Stage
- Late-stage
A good fit if you're…
- Engineers who want both government and commercial deployment work
- People pursuing a clearance path and the premium it carries
- Candidates comfortable with defense-adjacent GenAI
What they do
Scale AI built its business on data labeling and now runs a broad GenAI deployment practice spanning Donovan (its defense product) and enterprise Fortune 500 work. The FDE seat covers evals, RAG, and shipped GenAI systems across both worlds.
What “forward deployed” means here
True forward-deployed, with unusually wide scope: one week enterprise, the next defense. SF/DC basing and high travel come with the territory, and the defense side opens a path to cleared work that most FDE seats can't offer.
Comp & leveling
The GenAI FDE role shows $240K–$400K TC — competitive, with the cleared/defense track carrying a premium on top. DC seats trend toward the public-sector, clearance-gated end of that range.
Growth signals
Scale sits inside the federal AI land-grab alongside Databricks, Cognition, and AWS, and its defense-plus-enterprise breadth is genuinely rare. The scope is the draw; the defense association is the thing to be sure you want.
Analysis updated 2026-09-03
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