Skip to content
zarif/automatesGet Still Building

AI Skills Index · September 2026

What Forward Deployed Engineer job posts ask for

The tools named in 248 postings from 42 employers. Each percentage is the share of those employers that name the tool in at least one posting. Forward Deployed Engineer and FDE titles. Deployment strategists are left out.

How this is counted · Download the chart · The Forward Deployed Engineer career path

These posts rarely name tools

No tool is named by even a fifth of the employers hiring for this role. What they name instead is the way the work is done:

  • Building AI agents52%
  • Evals50%
  • RAG26%
  • Model Context Protocol (MCP)24%
  • Prompt engineering19%
  • Fine-tuning17%
  • Function and tool calling17%
  • Vector databases and search14%
  • RLHF and preference tuning12%
  • Guardrails10%
  • GPU work10%
  • Using AI coding tools10%

Signature tools

What sets this role apart: tools its postings name far more often than other AI job posts do.

Tools, ranked

Named products you can learn and put on a resume, counted when at least 2 employers name them. Open a row to see where postings put it, which employers name it, and example postings.

  1. 01
    PostgreSQLData and retrievalSignature

    12%

    5 of 42 employers

    Named in 6% of the role's postings. Of 16 postings that name it, it is a requirement in 5, part of the work in 7 and a bonus in 4.

    Employers naming it: Palantir, OpenAI, GitLab, MongoDB, Scale AI.

  2. 02
    PyTorchML training and serving

    Mostly a requirement

    10%

    4 of 42 employers

    Named in 5% of the role's postings. Of 13 postings that name it, it is a requirement in 13.

    Employers naming it: Databricks, Faculty, Baseten, CoreWeave.

  3. 03
    LangChainAgent frameworks and SDKs

    Mostly a requirement

    10%

    4 of 42 employers

    Named in 5% of the role's postings. Of 12 postings that name it, it is a requirement in 12.

    Employers naming it: Databricks, Okta, CoreWeave, GitLab.

  4. 04
    Claude CodeCoding agentsNew wave

    Mostly a requirement

    10%

    4 of 42 employers

    Named in 2% of the role's postings. Of 6 postings that name it, it is a requirement in 5 and part of the work in 1.

    Employers naming it: MongoDB, Okta, Vapi, Vercel.

  5. 05
    CursorCoding agentsNew wave

    Mostly a requirement

    10%

    4 of 42 employers

    Named in 2% of the role's postings. Of 6 postings that name it, it is a requirement in 5 and part of the work in 1.

    Employers naming it: MongoDB, Okta, Vapi, Vercel.

  6. 06
    OpenAI API and GPT modelsModel APIs and platforms

    Mostly a requirement

    10%

    4 of 42 employers

    Named in 2% of the role's postings. Of 6 postings that name it, it is a requirement in 5 and part of the work in 1.

    Employers naming it: Databricks, MongoDB, Cohere, Parloa.

  7. 07
    Apache SparkData and retrieval

    Part of the day-to-day work

    7%

    3 of 42 employers

    Named in 4% of the role's postings. Of 11 postings that name it, it is a requirement in 3, part of the work in 7 and a bonus in 1.

    Employers naming it: Palantir, Snowflake, Stripe.

  8. 08
    pandasML training and serving

    Mostly a requirement

    7%

    3 of 42 employers

    Named in 4% of the role's postings. Of 10 postings that name it, it is a requirement in 8 and a bonus in 2.

    Employers naming it: Databricks, Snowflake, Stripe.

  9. 09
    Apache KafkaData and retrieval

    Mostly a requirement

    7%

    3 of 42 employers

    Named in 2% of the role's postings. Of 5 postings that name it, it is a requirement in 4 and part of the work in 1.

    Employers naming it: Databricks, MongoDB, Parloa.

  10. 10
    Claude models (Anthropic API)Model APIs and platforms

    Mostly a requirement

    7%

    3 of 42 employers

    Named in 2% of the role's postings. Of 5 postings that name it, it is a requirement in 5.

    Employers naming it: Databricks, Okta, Cohere.

  11. 11
    Gemini modelsModel APIs and platforms

    Mostly a requirement

    7%

    3 of 42 employers

    Named in 2% of the role's postings. Of 5 postings that name it, it is a requirement in 5.

    Employers naming it: Databricks, MongoDB, Cohere.

  12. 12
    SGLangML training and serving

    Mostly a requirement

    7%

    3 of 42 employers

    Named in 2% of the role's postings. Of 5 postings that name it, it is a requirement in 5.

    Employers naming it: Modal, Together AI, Baseten.

  13. 13
    vLLMML training and serving

    Mostly a requirement

    7%

    3 of 42 employers

    Named in 2% of the role's postings. Of 5 postings that name it, it is a requirement in 5.

    Employers naming it: Modal, Together AI, Baseten.

  14. 14
    MongoDBData and retrieval

    Often a bonus

    7%

    3 of 42 employers

    Named in 2% of the role's postings. Of 4 postings that name it, it is a requirement in 1, part of the work in 1 and a bonus in 2.

    Employers naming it: Scale AI, Parloa, Vapi.

  15. 15
    RedisData and retrieval

    Often a bonus

    7%

    3 of 42 employers

    Named in 2% of the role's postings. Of 4 postings that name it, it is a requirement in 1, part of the work in 1 and a bonus in 2.

    Employers naming it: GitLab, Parloa, Vapi.

  16. 16
    scikit-learnML training and serving

    Mostly a requirement

    5%

    2 of 42 employers

    Named in 4% of the role's postings. Of 10 postings that name it, it is a requirement in 10.

    Employers naming it: Databricks, Faculty.

  17. 17
    Hugging FaceModel APIs and platforms

    Mostly a requirement

    5%

    2 of 42 employers

    Named in 4% of the role's postings. Of 9 postings that name it, it is a requirement in 9.

    Employers naming it: Databricks, CoreWeave.

  18. 18
    MySQLData and retrieval

    Mostly a requirement

    5%

    2 of 42 employers

    Named in 2% of the role's postings. Of 4 postings that name it, it is a requirement in 3 and part of the work in 1.

    Employers naming it: OpenAI, Parloa.

  19. 19
    TensorFlowML training and serving

    Mostly a requirement

    5%

    2 of 42 employers

    Named in 2% of the role's postings. Of 4 postings that name it, it is a requirement in 4.

    Employers naming it: Faculty, CoreWeave.

  20. 20
    PodmanDeveloper platforms

    Mostly a requirement

    5%

    2 of 42 employers

    Named in 1% of the role's postings. Of 3 postings that name it, it is a requirement in 2 and a bonus in 1.

    Employers naming it: Palantir, Labelbox.

Show 2 more tools
  1. 21
    TensorRTML training and serving

    Mostly a requirement

    5%

    2 of 42 employers

    Named in 1% of the role's postings. Of 3 postings that name it, it is a requirement in 3.

    Employers naming it: Together AI, Baseten.

  2. 22
    OpenAI CodexCoding agentsNew wave

    5%

    2 of 42 employers

    Named in 1% of the role's postings. Of 2 postings that name it, it is a requirement in 1 and part of the work in 1.

    Employers naming it: Vapi, Vercel.

On the radar

Newer AI tools that at least two employers already name in these postings. Small numbers, early signal.

Foundations these posts assume

Languages, platforms and basics most postings expect you to have already.

  • Python71%
  • AWS52%
  • TypeScript48%
  • Microsoft Azure43%
  • Google Cloud43%
  • Kubernetes40%
  • Docker33%
  • JavaScript31%
  • CI/CD29%
  • Go29%
  • SQL26%
  • Java24%
  • Terraform17%
  • React12%
  • Node.js12%
  • Rust12%
  • C++7%
  • Git7%
  • Bash and shell scripting7%
  • Linux and Unix7%
  • C#7%
  • Next.js7%
  • Vue.js7%

NEWSLETTER

Still Building

The index is re-read every month. The newsletter says what moved and why it matters.

One story from the AI world, told properly, and what I make of it.