FDE travel is customer-site work
People hear “travel job” and picture a laptop in Lisbon. Forward deployed engineering is the other kind: the company books the flight, you embed with a customer, you ship, you leave. Right now 311 listings on this board say travel or customer-site work in the job text.
What the travel actually is
You go where the factory, hospital, agency, or data center is. Weeks on-site are common. Hotels, customer badges, sometimes clearance. The point is to be in the room — debug their environment, earn trust, get the deployment used. It is closer to consulting plus software than to remote work with scenic weekends.
What it is not
- Choosing the city yourself
- Slow travel / digital nomad visas
- Every FDE role (most listings never mention travel; we do not guess)
How we flag it
A role gets a Travel badge only when the description says things like “25% travel,” “willingness to travel,” or “on-site with customers.” Office HQ “on-site” is not enough. Filter the live list: FDE jobs with customer-site travel.
How to read a posting
- Travel percent — 20% vs 80% is a different life
- Home base — many roles are city-anchored with regional customer trips, not international glam
- Clearance / sector — defense and public sector travel is more constrained