Roboflow vs LendAPI vs Arbol

Three FDE postings from this week, three completely different jobs under one title: a vision-AI platform, a lending-infrastructure startup and a climate-risk insurer.

	Roboflow	LendAPI	Arbol
Open roles	1	1	0
Comp on board	$180K–$250K base + equity (per recruiter post; not shown on Ashby page)	$140K–$180K base + 0.10–0.20% equity	Undisclosed
FDE type	Solutions engineering	True forward-deployed	Product-embedded
Travel	Medium	Low	Remote-first
Comp	Top of market	Equity-heavy	Below market
Stage	Growth-stage	Early-stage	Growth-stage
Our take	A top-of-market non-lab FDE band on a seat that sits in GTM — great if the field work feeds product, a quota-carrying SE with a nicer title if it doesn't.	Rare disclosed equity for an FDE, at an early-stage lending platform — but the founder's tweet and the careers page disagree on base pay by $60K, so verify before you apply.	A rare FDE seat inside a climate-risk insurer — you build pricing and decision engines, so it is closer to internal data engineering than customer-facing deployment.

Bottom line

Roboflow pays the most on paper but sits in GTM, so confirm it isn't quota-carrying. LendAPI is the purest implementation seat and the only one with disclosed equity, but check the conflicting base pay. Arbol is the lowest-paid and most internal, best for a quant who wants remote and domain depth. Pick by what you want to build, not by the title.