This role involves travel to customer sites. What can you commit to, and what would make it unworkable?

Answer with a number, a limit and a question. Here is why you can’t assume the number: stated travel varies between employers and within one. As of September 2026, Palantir’s New York Forward Deployed Software Engineer posting asks for travel up to 25%, flexible based on personal preferences, while its London NATO posting asks for travel throughout Europe 70–90% of the time. A remote listing is no promise either: Glean’s Founding FDE posting, also read in September 2026, is remote and requires 25–50% travel. The Engineering Leadership newsletter reported, in August 2026, that OpenAI generally tells new FDE joiners to expect around 50% of their time on site, varying by project. Read the posting first. Know the travel it states and quote it back, so the conversation starts from their number. Commit in units someone can staff against. Weeks on site per month, the longest stretch away, the notice you need, whether international works. “I’m flexible” can’t be planned against. State the limit plainly. Say what would make it unworkable. A one-line reason helps; you don’t owe the details of your family or health. Ask how it works on this team. Ask the recruiter where the current customers are and whether on-site time is heavier at discovery and go-live. Save the rest for the hiring manager: who decides when a customer wants someone there every week, and how much on-site time varies across the team. Say it in three sentences: your number, your limit, your question. The answer below opens with exactly that, and gives the detail only when asked. Ask whether the posted figure is an average over the year or a cap, and which customer you would start on. One customer in one city for a year is closer to relocating than to travel. If you agree a limit, confirm it in writing in the email after the offer call, so it isn’t left to the first engagement.

How much travel can you commit to? | FDE interview question

A practice prompt we wrote. No company or candidate report names it, so it carries no company tag.

How to answer

Answer with a number, a limit and a question. Here is why you can’t assume the number: stated travel varies between employers and within one. As of September 2026, Palantir’s New York posting asks for travel up to 25%, flexible based on personal preferences, while its London NATO posting asks for travel throughout Europe 70–90% of the time. Source 1Forward Deployed Software Engineer (New York, NY) - Palantir on LeverPublisherPalantir Technologies (Lever)Source typecompany job postingSource 2Forward Deployed Software Engineer - NATO (London) - Palantir on LeverPublisherPalantir Technologies (Lever)Source typecompany job posting A remote listing is no promise either: Glean’s Founding posting, also read in September 2026, is remote and requires 25–50% travel. Source 3Founding Forward Deployed EngineerPublisherGleanSource typecompany job posting The Engineering Leadership newsletter reported, in August 2026, that OpenAI generally tells new FDE joiners to expect around 50% of their time on site, varying by project. Source 4Inside OpenAI's Forward Deployed Engineer RolePublisherEngineering Leadership (Gregor Ojstersek)Source typenews report

Read the posting first. Know the travel it states and quote it back, so the conversation starts from their number.
Commit in units someone can staff against. Weeks on site per month, the longest stretch away, the notice you need, whether international works. “I’m flexible” can’t be planned against.
State the limit plainly. Say what would make it unworkable. A one-line reason helps; you don’t owe the details of your family or health.
Ask how it works on this team. Ask the recruiter where the current customers are and whether on-site time is heavier at discovery and go-live. Save the rest for the hiring manager: who decides when a customer wants someone there every week, and how much on-site time varies across the team.

Say it in three sentences: your number, your limit, your question. The answer below opens with exactly that, and gives the detail only when asked.

Ask whether the posted figure is an average over the year or a cap, and which customer you would start on. One customer in one city for a year is closer to relocating than to travel. If you agree a limit, confirm it in writing in the email after the offer call, so it isn’t left to the first engagement.

Follow-ups

What the interviewer may ask next, once your first answer is on the table.

A customer asks for someone on site every week for the next quarter. What do you say?
Is that limit fixed, or does it change with enough notice?
Have you done sustained travel for work before? What did it cost you?

Where answers go wrong

Says “I’m flexible” to get through the screen, and the mismatch can surface in the first engagement.
Gives a list of conditions and no commitment, so the recruiter has nothing to plan against.

Answer this in two minutes

Write the answer you would say out loud. The clock starts with your first word.

Compare with the model answer

Illustrative answer about a fictional project

Written in the first person to show the structure. Tell yours from your own work.

I can be on site up to two weeks a month, and three weeks in a row for a go-live with a month’s notice. What wouldn’t work is being away most weekends for more than a couple of months. Is on-site time on this team heavier at discovery and go-live, or steady?

If they ask for more: Your posting says “regular travel to customer sites” and gives no number, so here is the detail behind mine. The stretches can be up to a week, and international travel is fine with the same month’s notice. The limit is a family commitment on weekends that I won’t move, and I’d rather tell you now than find out on an engagement. So Monday to Thursday on site every other week works for a long time, and I can do it every week through a go-live. Seven-day weeks on site for a whole quarter would not.

I’ve done this before. Last year I spent four months supporting a rollout at a manufacturer’s plant about a two-hour flight away. I was there every other week, Monday to Thursday, and a full ten days around cutover. It worked because we planned the on-site weeks around their shift changes and my remote weeks around code, not meetings.

One more question back: where are the team’s current customers, and are any of them within driving distance?

For the hiring manager, later: When a customer asks for someone on site every week, who decides, and has the team ever said no? And what’s the range of on-site time across the team right now, from the heaviest to the lightest?

If they ask what you’d say to a customer who wants someone on site every week for the next quarter: “I’d say yes to every week through go-live, then propose alternating weeks, with a standing call and a written update in the weeks I’m remote. And I’d want my manager in that conversation before I commit the team.”