Salary band 2026
-
Base only, before equity and bonus
The band above, plus total-comp notes and what candidates are actually accepting. Work email, please.
Your benchmark is on its way. If the band looks tight for what you need, it is usually the brief rather than the budget. Here is how we turn a role like this into a signed offer.
See how we deliver → Or talk it through →For employers
Forward deployed engineers (FDEs, sometimes called forward deployment engineers) are among the highest-priced engineering hires in Australia: the pool of engineers with proven customer-embedded delivery is small, and demand from AI-native and data-platform companies keeps climbing. These are the bands employers are paying now.
| Forward deployed engineer | Sydney | Melbourne | Brisbane |
|---|---|---|---|
| Senior | AUD 180-240k | AUD 175-230k | AUD 160-215k |
| Tech lead | AUD 230-270k | - | - |
Base only, before equity, bonus and super; 25th to 75th percentile of accepted offers. AI-native scale-ups typically pay top of band plus structured equity, and the premium follows proven delivery inside customer environments rather than the title. Check FDE pay by city and level in the checker above.
Ready to hire? Re:Sourced runs a dedicated forward deployed engineering practice: a median of 21 days from brief to signed offer, no fee until placement and a 90-day replacement guarantee. Start a forward deployed engineer search →
Further reading: how to hire a forward deployed engineer, FDE salary in Australia 2026 and our forward deployed engineering recruitment practice.
Methodology
Bands above are calibrated against Re:Sourced active and recent search briefs in the 12 months ending Q1 2026, supplemented with public salary data from Glassdoor, Levels.fyi, Robert Half AU, Hays AU and Talent International.
Bands represent the 25th to 75th percentile of accepted offers for like-for-like roles. Outliers (top 10% AI engineering at frontier labs, deep-startup early stage) are excluded from the band but cited in the full Salary Guide 2026.
For named-employer comp data on a specific brief, start a hiring campaign.
Planning a hire? The Cost-to-Hire Calculator adds super, payroll tax and on-costs to show the all-in employer cost.
Common questions
The bands are built from accepted offers on live Re:Sourced searches across Australian tech employers, not advertised ranges or survey self-reports. They are calibrated for 2026.
Base salary only, before equity, bonus and superannuation. They sit at the 25th to 75th percentile of accepted offers, so the midpoint is a realistic market rate rather than a ceiling.
They are calibrated for 2026 against active searches and updated as the market moves. For named-employer compensation on a specific role, start a hiring campaign.
Senior forward deployed engineers earn AUD 180-240k base in Sydney, AUD 175-230k in Melbourne and AUD 160-215k in Brisbane; FDE tech leads in Sydney earn AUD 230-270k. Base only, 25th to 75th percentile of accepted offers. AI-native scale-ups typically pay top of band plus structured equity.
Our median for forward deployed engineering searches was 21 days from brief to signed offer in Q2 2026, with no fee until placement and a 90-day replacement guarantee.