--- title: Forward Deployed Engineer at Appen in San Francisco, CA description: Appen is hiring for the Forward Deployed Engineer role in San Francisco, CA. Pays $150K–$200K per year. See the full description and apply. type: job url: https://www.foundrole.com/jobs/forward-deployed-engineer-at-appen-01a0fede-6f8c-72f9-8118-6496a4971dee date: 2026-11-15T01:26:44Z og_description: Join Appen as Forward Deployed Engineer in San Francisco, CA. Pays $150K–$200K per year. Full-time, hybrid role. og_image: https://www.foundrole.com/og/kpfkgs.png breadcrumbs: - label: Home url: https://www.foundrole.com/ - label: Search url: https://www.foundrole.com/jobs --- | | | |---|---| | **Company** | Appen | | **Location** | San Francisco, CA (Hybrid) | | **Salary** | $150K/yr - $200K/yr | | **Type** | Full Time | | **Posted** | Oct 03, 2026 | ## Is this job real? **Ghost job check:** C · Some flags. Mostly fine, a few things to check. ## Visa sponsorship - **H-1B:** Appen sponsors H-1B visas. It filed 4 H-1B petitions (FY2026 Q1 – FY2026 Q4). - **E-Verify:** No E-Verify enrollment on record for Appen. ## Pay for similar jobs Most similar jobs pay $244,000 – $322,000 a year (median $244,000). ## Description **Role Purpose** The Forward Deployed Engineer works directly with enterprise clients to design, deploy, and optimize GenAI data solutions, with full ownership of final delivered data quality. Embedded across engineering, data operations, and client delivery, this role ensures datasets, pipelines, workflows, and automations meet defined accuracy, reliability, and performance requirements for GenAI model development. ### **Your Impact** - Act as a trusted consultative partner to clients by defining requirements, clarifying success criteria, shaping high-quality annotation guidelines, and proactively providing insights. - Influence the what and the why behind GenAI data solutions by translating ambiguous client needs into clear, scalable workflows. - Deliver GenAI datasets that meet all defined acceptance and quality criteria. - Define the validation and automation requirements that reduce variance, manual review effort, rework, and time to validation. - Partner with engineering to build requirements as scalable, reproducible, and observable pipelines. - Contribute reusable quality frameworks and validators adopted across multiple projects. ### **What You Bring** - 3+ years of experience in a customer-facing technical role such as solutions engineering, solutions architect, data or technical consulting, or data operations. - Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Data Science, Statistics, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience. - Experience working on GenAI, machine learning, or model evaluation data, including LLM training, annotation, or evaluation workflows. - A consultative problem-solving approach when leading client conversations, asking sharp questions, and guiding stakeholders toward better decisions. - Ability to vibe code but proficiency in Python and SQL is a plus - Confidence in working directly with client engineering or machine learning teams. ### **Location and Work Arrangement** This is a hybrid role based in San Francisco, CA. You will be required to work from our San Francisco office two days per week. ### **Why You’ll Love Working Here** At Appen, we foster a culture of innovation, collaboration, and excellence. We value curiosity, accountability, and a commitment to delivering the highest-quality AI solutions for frontier models. You’ll work on complex challenges that shape the future of AI across industries and geographies, alongside talented people in a culture that values humility over ego. You’ll have the flexibility to deliver in a way that works for you and your team, supported by tools, resources and development opportunities to continue to build your capability over time. ### **About Appen** Appen has been a leader in AI training data for over 30 years. We specialize in human generated data to train, fine tune, and evaluate models across generative AI, large language models, computer vision, and speech recognition. Our AI assisted data annotation platform and global crowd of more than 1 million contributors in over 200 countries support model pre-training, supervised fine tuning, evaluation and benchmarking, safety and red teaming, and multilingual global expansion. ## Skills - Influencing - Machine Learning Model Training - Data Annotation - Data Science - AI Training Data - Python - Machine Learning Model Fine-Tuning - Forward Deployed Engineering - Automation - Solution Architecture - Model Evaluation (Machine Learning) - SQL - Statistics - Benchmarking - Technical Consulting - Computer Vision - Generative AI - Embedded Systems - Red Team (Cybersecurity Offense) - Large Language Models (Llm) - Computer Science - Data Quality - Machine Learning Model Development - Speech Recognition Software - Machine Learning - Generative AI Foundations - Solutions Engineering ## Related - [Technology & Software jobs](https://www.foundrole.com/careers/technology-and-software?utm_source=ai_markdown)- [Software Development jobs](https://www.foundrole.com/careers/technology-and-software/software-development?utm_source=ai_markdown)- [Software Developer / Engineer jobs](https://www.foundrole.com/careers/technology-and-software/software-development/software-developer-engineer?utm_source=ai_markdown)- [Forward Deployed Engineer jobs](https://www.foundrole.com/careers/technology-and-software/software-development/software-developer-engineer/forward-deployed-engineer?utm_source=ai_markdown)- [Browse all companies](https://www.foundrole.com/companies?utm_source=ai_markdown) ## Explore this job market - [California](https://www.foundrole.com/locations/us/california?utm_source=ai_markdown) — 260759 jobs - [San Francisco, CA](https://www.foundrole.com/locations/us/california/san-francisco?utm_source=ai_markdown) — 27903 jobs - [Data Infrastructure and Analytics](https://www.foundrole.com/sectors/technology/data-infrastructure-and-analytics?utm_source=ai_markdown) — 15448 jobs - [Appen](https://www.foundrole.com/companies/appen?utm_source=ai_markdown) — 15 jobs ## Related pages - [California](https://www.foundrole.com/locations/us/california?utm_source=ai_markdown) — 260759 jobs - [San Francisco, CA](https://www.foundrole.com/locations/us/california/san-francisco?utm_source=ai_markdown) — 27903 jobs - [Data Infrastructure and Analytics](https://www.foundrole.com/sectors/technology/data-infrastructure-and-analytics?utm_source=ai_markdown) — 15448 jobs - [Appen](https://www.foundrole.com/companies/appen?utm_source=ai_markdown) — 15 jobs ## Browse - [Companies](https://www.foundrole.com/companies?utm_source=ai_markdown) - [Jobs by country](https://www.foundrole.com/locations?utm_source=ai_markdown) - [Jobs in the United States by state and city](https://www.foundrole.com/locations/us?utm_source=ai_markdown) - [H1B sponsors by location](https://www.foundrole.com/h1b-sponsors?utm_source=ai_markdown) - [H1B salaries](https://www.foundrole.com/h1b-salaries?utm_source=ai_markdown) - [Sectors and industries](https://www.foundrole.com/sectors?utm_source=ai_markdown) - [Jobs by career field](https://www.foundrole.com/careers?utm_source=ai_markdown) - [Latest jobs](https://www.foundrole.com/jobs/latest?utm_source=ai_markdown)