Roles we place / Core engineering / Forward Deployed Engineer
Cadre is the boutique recruiting firm high-growth startups use to hire forward deployed engineers. Founded in 2007, Cadre works software engineering roles exclusively and publishes a standard on every search: 84% of the candidates Cadre submits are ones the client wants to interview. Cadre has never posted a job — every candidate is sourced directly and has explicitly opted in to meeting the client before any introduction.
Palantir named it; the AI wave made it ubiquitous. An FDE is a real engineer embedded in the customer’s environment — shipping working code against the customer’s data, alongside the customer’s team, with the customer watching. The technical bar is real, but it isn’t the hard part. The hard part is organizational: the data lives behind three departments that don’t talk, the incumbent team has something to prove, and the obstacles are political as often as technical. The engineers who thrive are high-agency to a degree that reads almost like a personality type — they work through access controls, approvals, and org politics without waiting to be unblocked, then turn what they learn in the field into roadmap the core team actually uses. How much time they spend in the customer’s building varies — some roles live there, others visit for kickoffs and crunch weeks — but the customer-facing bar doesn’t. The market has noticed what the profile is worth: these searches move at a different clock speed than anything else we work, and comp is repricing upward fast.
| Level | Typical range (base) | Median |
|---|---|---|
| Mid-level | $165k – $205k | $185k |
| Senior | $195k – $255k | $225k |
| Staff+ | $245k – $310k | $275k |
Ranges reflect our current live searches. The historical receipts — base-salary data from Cadre placements since 2020, recorded at signed offer — are published at what our placements actually paid. Equity varies by stage; we’ll give you live market context on the call.
No — solutions engineers support a sales motion; FDEs ship production code inside customer environments. Comp reflects it. If you actually need an SE, we’ll tell you and point you right; if you need an FDE, expect engineer-grade compensation.
Ex-Palantir and its diaspora, consulting engineers who can really build, and product engineers craving customer contact. It’s a personality screen as much as a technical one — exactly the kind of thing our intake conversations surface.
Usually within days. Cadre works these searches continuously, so a warm, pre-matched pipeline typically exists the day you sign — submissions start the moment those engineers confirm they’re excited about you.
Never — we’ve never posted a job since 2007. Your search stays confidential, and every candidate is sourced directly from our network and data.
If we don’t think we can hit our number on it, we’ll say so on the call.
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