Sift
1 open Forward Deployed Engineer role at Sift. Curated with comp bands.
Comp on the board: $150K–$200K + equity (Employer provided).
On the board since Aug 2026 · still hiring
Our take
Why Sift
Proof the FDE model has reached hard-tech — SpaceX-and-Palantir alumni embedding engineers to wire observability into rockets, drones, and autonomous machines.
- FDE type
- True forward-deployed
- Travel
- Medium
- Comp
- Competitive
- Stage
- Early-stage
A good fit if you're…
- Infra engineers who want physical-AI and hard-tech deployments
- People with high-frequency telemetry / observability chops
- Candidates near Marina del Rey open to twice-weekly in-office
What they do
Sift builds a high-frequency observability platform for physical systems, founded by SpaceX, Palantir, and Google alumni out of Dragon/Falcon/Starlink telemetry work. FDEs embed to wire that platform into rockets, drones, and autonomous machines — telemetry at a volume and criticality most SaaS never touches.
What “forward deployed” means here
True forward-deployed engineering pointed at physical AI rather than chat agents: infrastructure-level integration work against real hardware telemetry. It's the clearest sign yet that the deployment role is moving into hard-tech, exactly where FDE demand is said to head next.
Comp & leveling
The board shows $150K–$200K plus equity, employer-provided, with in-office twice a week in Marina del Rey. A competitive early-stage band; the equity and the founder pedigree are part of the pitch.
Growth signals
The SpaceX/Palantir/Google DNA and the hard-tech customer surface are the signals worth weighting — this is a team with deep systems credibility betting that observability for physical machines is a durable market. Early stage, so expect broad ownership and startup ambiguity.
Analysis updated 2026-09-16
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