US Department of Defense
0 open Forward Deployed Engineer roles at US Department of Defense, plus 1 closed. Curated with comp bands.
On the board since Jul 2026 · no roles open right now
Our take
Why US Department of Defense
The Pentagon borrowed Palantir's title and made it a GS-14 tour — below-market cash, but a subsidized on-ramp into cleared FDE work.
- FDE type
- True forward-deployed
- Travel
- High
- Comp
- Below market
- Stage
- Public
A good fit if you're…
- US citizens who hold or can get Secret/Top Secret clearance
- Engineers who want mission work at unit level, not HQ
- People planning to exit into cleared private-sector FDE roles
What they do
The Department of Defense's US Tech Force × War Force program hires engineers on two-year tours to deploy AI, ML and data systems across the department. It is a government program, not a company, so read the page as a program profile.
What “forward deployed” means here
FDEs embed down to the unit level, deploying systems where they are used rather than at a headquarters desk. That is the purest form of the Palantir model on the board, with government procurement and security constraints layered on top.
Comp & leveling
Pay starts at GS-14 ($125,776) and tops out near $200K for the tour — well below private FDE bands. The real value is the clearance and the program's stated exit path into private-sector roles, where cleared FDE work carries a durable premium. We used “public” as the closest stage enum.
Growth signals
The listing talks about hiring hundreds of engineers, and the program trains alongside partner tech companies. This round closed July 17; watch for the next cohort rather than applying to this req.
Analysis updated 2026-09-28
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