What do forward deployed engineer postings in Switzerland ask for?

This note describes the forward deployed engineer roles that were open in Switzerland on one day, from the postings themselves. For what the role is, see the guide: What is a forward deployed engineer? The list that is kept current is the roles list.

What was counted, and how?

Ten postings at nine employers, each read on the employer's own careers system on 14 November 2026.

• A posting is counted when it was open on that day, names a place in Switzerland, and says that the engineer writes production code inside customer environments and works with the product team. This is the test behind the FDE label on the roles list.
• Four more postings on the list are labelled adjacent. They are named at the end and are not part of the counts.
• A role seen only on a job aggregator is not counted.
• Every figure below is a count out of these ten postings. Ten is a small number. Read the counts as a description of one day, and not as a rule about the Swiss market.

Which postings were read?

The table gives each posting as the employer wrote it. "Not stated" means the posting says nothing on the point.

Where are the roles?

In Zurich. All ten postings name Zurich. One, from Blockstream, also names Geneva. Two also name places abroad: the Databricks posting lists Belgrade and Munich beside Zürich, and Scalera gives Switzerland or Germany as the home base.

No posting counted here names Lausanne, Basel, Bern, Zug or Lugano. One adjacent posting names Lausanne.

Do the roles require German or French?

Three of the ten do, and a fourth strongly prefers it.

• Salesforce asks its forward deployed engineer for fluent English "and at least one of German or French".
• Laelaps AI asks for "fluent German and/or French, and good English", and explains why: "Our sites and their operators run in German; the team runs in English."
• Scalera asks for German at "C1 minimum, near-native" and for excellent English.
• Blockstream requires excellent English and says German or French "is strongly preferred".
• Flink Robotics asks for fluent English and calls other languages a plus.
• The other five postings state no language requirement.

How much travel do the postings state?

Nine of the ten say something about travel, and the answers range from none to about half the time.

• About half: OpenAI states that travel "up to 50% is required". Laelaps AI expects "roughly half your time at customer sites in Switzerland and Europe". Flink Robotics asks for travel "around 50% of the time".
• About a fifth to a quarter: Databricks states travel to customers "20% of the time". Both Salesforce postings state about 25%.
• Regular, with no share given: Blockstream asks for regular travel to customer locations across Switzerland. Scalera calls regular travel "a core part of the job", across Switzerland, Austria and Germany.
• None: DeepJudge states that "no travel is required for this role".
• LatticeFlow AI's posting does not mention travel to customers.

What environments and industries do the postings describe?

Four of the ten postings describe on-premise customer environments, and two of those describe air-gapped ones.

• Blockstream describes deployment into "on-premise, network-isolated, and air-gapped banking environments", and integration with core banking and capital markets systems.
• Laelaps AI describes a system that runs on-premise at industrial facilities, critical infrastructure and military sites, inside customer networks that are "often air-gapped or heavily restricted".
• DeepJudge describes customer environments from cloud deployments to "complex on-premise infrastructure" at law firms.
• LatticeFlow AI describes deployment "across both SaaS and on-premise customer environments", and the translation of the EU AI Act, NIST and ISO 42001 into technical work.

The other postings describe construction companies and their suppliers (Scalera), sites where the company's robots handle goods (Flink Robotics), and large enterprise customers (OpenAI, Databricks, Salesforce).

What experience do the postings ask for?

Nine of the ten name a number of years, from three to seven.

DeepJudge and Laelaps AI ask for 3+ years. Scalera asks for 4+ and Blockstream for 4 to 8. OpenAI, Flink Robotics and the senior Salesforce role ask for 5 or more. Databricks asks for 6+. The Salesforce posting titled Forward Deployed Engineer describes a lead role in its text and asks for 7 or more.

Two postings set a condition on who can be hired. Laelaps AI asks for citizenship of Switzerland, an EU or EFTA state or a NATO state. Flink Robotics asks for a Swiss or EU citizen, an existing Swiss work permit or a degree from a Swiss university, and offers no visa sponsorship. OpenAI's posting offers relocation assistance.

Do the postings state pay?

No. None of the ten postings states a pay figure. Three say only that the salary is competitive.

FDE Club publishes no pay figure for Switzerland for that reason. Figures that sources state for the United States are in the guide.

Which roles are labelled adjacent?

Four more postings were open on the same day and are on the roles list with the adjacent label. Each is customer-facing technical work in Switzerland. None of the four describes the whole of the test above.

• Salesforce, Deployment Strategist, Zurich. The posting describes a customer-facing advisor who works in a team with forward deployed engineers.
• CoLab Software, Mechanical Forward Deployed Engineer - Switzerland. The posting asks for a mechanical engineer who deploys and tunes the product with customers, and lists scripting as a nice-to-have.
• Neural Concept, Platform Deployment Engineer (Europe), with Lausanne among its places. The posting describes deploying and operating the platform in customer infrastructure, including air-gapped clusters.
• Namespace, Customer-Facing Software Engineer, in Switzerland. The posting describes work done mostly by message and email, with on-site visits as the exception.

One posting with FDE in its title is not on the list. Databricks describes its "Sr. Engagement Manager, FDE" for Munich and Zürich as a "quota-carrying" role that sells the work. It is a sales role.

What changes after this date?

Postings open and close without notice. This note is a record of 14 November 2026 and is not updated when a role closes. The roles list is checked at least once a week, shows the day of the last check on every row, and can be downloaded as JSON or CSV.

Sources

The sources of this note are the fourteen postings linked above and the Databricks posting below. Each was opened on the employer's own careers system on 14 November 2026.

1. Databricks: Sr. Engagement Manager, FDE, job posting
2. FDE Club: the roles list, with the day of the last check on every row