A World-Changing Company
Palantir builds the world’s leading software for data-driven decisions and operations. By bringing the right data to the people who need it, our platforms empower our partners to develop lifesaving drugs, forecast supply chain disruptions, locate missing children, and more.
The Role
Forward Deployed Software Engineers (FDSEs) build creative technical solutions to our customers' hardest problems. Organizations often come to us with nebulous questions, like “Why has our assembly line slowed down?” or “How can we find money launderers financing terrorism?” FDSEs lead the process of finding answers.
As an FDSE, you'll be part of a small team of fellow FDSEs and
Deployment Strategists supporting a single customer in the government or commercial space. Like at a startup, you'll make decisions about how to take on the challenges your customer poses, from the nature of the data to the user population to the legacy system environment. You'll have a large company behind you — namely, software built and maintained by hundreds of Software Engineers who build scalable, reliable platforms for you to customize and extend.
You'll start by unpacking a problem and learning about the customer's data, then move to high-level system design and prototyping. Then you're ready to deploy Palantir software, develop custom applications, and integrate the data. Along the way, you'll collaborate with technical and non-technical individuals - from Palantir and from our customers - to define and achieve goals. You'll iterate with customer users and stakeholders on a rapid cadence. You'll also work with Palantir's Product Development team on the roadmaps for our core products.
With Palantir products as your baseline, you will leverage any technology you need to drive impact. It doesn't matter what languages you know when you join us, but it does matter that you can pick new languages up quickly. We often face entirely novel problems, so solving them may require expanding your skillset. For example, we currently use:
- A variety of languages, including Java and Go for back end and Typescript for front end
- Open-source technologies like Cassandra, Spark, ElasticSearch, React, and Redux
- Industry-standard build tooling, including Gradle, Webpack, and Github
And if what you need doesn't exist yet? Go build it.
A career as an FDSE is an opportunity to gain rare insight into the world's most important institutions and industries, and to grow more quickly than you imagined you could. As you rotate among teams, you'll dive deep into domains such as intelligence, energy, health, finance, and law enforcement. You'll learn from experts in these fields about their problems and the tradeoffs they must consider in order to solve them. Questions that seem simple from the outside will quickly become complex as you consider the nuances and consequences of every possible answer.
Technologies We Use
- Core Palantir products provide the foundations for our deployments.
- Custom applications built on top of core Palantir platforms.
- Postgres, Cassandra, Hadoop, and Spark for distributed data storage and parallel computing.
- Java and Groovy for our back-end applications and data integration tools.
- Typescript, React, Leaflet, and d3 for our web technologies.
- Python for data processing and analysis.
- Palantir cloud infrastructure based on AWS EC2 and S3.
Our Principles
- Impact: We take on meaningful and challenging projects that change the world for the better.
- Dedication: We see projects through from beginning to end in spite of obstacles we may encounter.
- Collaboration: We work internally with people from a variety of backgrounds — such as other FDSEs, product teams, and Deployment Strategists. We also work externally with our customers, often on site, to understand and solve their problems.
- Trust: We trust each other to effectively manage time and priorities—we don't micromanage. We want to give people the space to think for themselves.
- Growth: We push ourselves and our peers to improve themselves and the world around them.
- Learning: We often face entirely novel problems, where we need to pick up a lot of new information and learn how to use it to make progress.
What We Value
- Strong engineering background, preferred in fields such as Computer Science, Mathematics, Software Engineering, Physics.
- Familiarity with data structures, storage systems, cloud infrastructure, front-end frameworks, and other technical tools.
- Understanding of how technical decisions impact the user of what you’re building.
- Proficiency with programming languages such as Java, C++, Python, JavaScript, or similar languages.
- Ability to work effectively in teams of technical and non-technical individuals.
- Skill and comfort working in a rapidly changing environment with dynamic objectives and iteration with users.
- Demonstrated ability to continuously learn, work independently, and make decisions with minimal supervision.
- Willingness and interest to travel as needed.
What We Require
- Security clearance or the ability to obtain a clearance.
Life at Palantir
We want every Palantirian to achieve their best outcomes, that’s why we celebrate individuals’ strengths, skills, and interests, from your first interview to your longterm growth, rather than rely on traditional career ladders. Paying attention to the needs of our community enables us to optimize our opportunities to grow and helps ensure many pathways to success at Palantir. Promoting health and well-being across all areas of Palantirians’ lives is just one of the ways we’re investing in our community. Learn more at
Life at Palantir and note that our offerings may vary by region.
In keeping consistent with Palantir’s values and culture, we believe employees are “better together” and in-person work affords the opportunity for more creative outcomes. Therefore, we encourage employees to work from our offices to foster connectivity and innovation. Many teams do offer hybrid options (WFH a day or two a week), allowing our employees to strike the right trade-off for their personal productivity. Based on business need, there are a few roles that allow for “Remote” work on an exceptional basis. If you are applying for one of these roles, you must work from the state in which you are employed. If the positing is specified as Onsite, you are required to work from an office.
Palantir is committed to promoting a culture of diversity, equity, and inclusion. We believe that all Palantirians share the responsibility of upholding our commitment to these values and encourage candidates from a wide range of backgrounds, perspectives, and lived experiences to join us in solving the world’s hardest problems.
Palantir is committed to making the job application process accessible to everyone. If you are living with a disability (visible or not visible) and need to request a reasonable accommodation for any part of the application or hiring process, please reach out and let us know how we can help.
