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What are Forward Deployed Engineers, and why are they so in demand? (2025)

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71–80 of 107 posts

Re: What are Forward Deployed Engineers, and why are they so in demand? (2025)

#71
post #13

I remember interviewing at Palantir back when they were making this role popular (probably a decade ago). I wanted to be an SDE and the recruiter kept pushing me towards this “forward deployed engineer” role. After hearing the pitch I went…oh so you want me to be a sales consultant? They did not take this well, I guess because Palantir was trying very hard to convince the world they were a tech unicorn and not a glor…

If you are sales then you get a (hopefully fat) sales commission.

If you are forward deployed then you get deployed forward (away from comfortable home office).

Re: What are Forward Deployed Engineers, and why are they so in demand? (2025)

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that the idea is cool, but from what I've heard from people in the role at most companies it's essentially a solutions architect role by another name. Funny enough, the Pragmatic Engineer (author of the post linked) had a follow up from about a year after the post above and he reports the same thing. https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/the-pulse-forward-deploye...

Looking at the official description of a Forward Deployed Engineer I'm uncertain what even the nominal difference between this and a Solutions Architect is. Is the nominal difference between an archetypal FDE and an archetypal SA greater than the difference in the SA role from company to company?

It’s an SA, except too many places started using SA for sales roles, so now we have the FDE role which… is starting to get polluted by sales, too.

Re: What are Forward Deployed Engineers, and why are they so in demand? (2025)

#73
In East Asia, there's a role called 'SI' (Systems Integration), but it's rarely recognized as proper career experience. It seems to be different in the West. The reason it's hard to get career recognition is that every company uses different stacks, so you're expected to know a lot of different technologies, but it's hard to go deep in any of them. And the company-specific technologies don't help when you change jobs, so you're effectively treated as bottom-tier. That's what I do for a living too.

In fact, most hardware manufacturers stick with legacy technologies for 'stability' reasons, but that experience is rarely recognized as valuable career capital

Re: What are Forward Deployed Engineers, and why are they so in demand? (2025)

#75
post #14

I'm swimming against the current with this, but I think the role is really cool. Blessed by your own company to wear the vestments of an expert, and expected by the customer to deliver the sort of advice that will get a team "unstuck", a forward deployed engineer is in the perfect spot to prove just how much of a hotshot he or she is. Especially in fields like defense where the customer is staffed with teams that are…

This job is really the stepping stone to product management - and it's the role that's going to really grow with LLMs. A mini-PM with Fable can solve tons of customer needs. Edit: I guess I'm not surprised to see the downvotes on this; I get that a lot of people on HN don't really understand product management, or don't value it. The path from engineering to product management can really start with getting closer to…

I don't understand why you're getting downvoted.

In East Asia, 'SI' is looked down upon, but one of the strengths often mentioned about SI is understanding the client's business, that is, the domain. It's true that in the industry, which is based on job-hopping and career building, it gets a lot of criticism. But from a startup perspective, it's often evaluated positively as having strong business insight. So I think your opinion is valid.

In fact, from what I've observed on HN, most people seem to be obsessed with 'programming purity' rather than 'product cycles.'

When you're doing product-focused or delivery-oriented development, there are inevitably black boxes you don't understand, points you can't control, and product management isn't about 'perfection.' It's about whether you can get fast feedback from customers and iterate. But here, it seems like most people assume that everything should be ideally perfect.

I agree with your opinion. Because if you go to the field rather than just dealing with services, you can clearly see how imperfect domain modeling really is. If a business is large enough, you can reshape the domain with capital power to fit your service, but as you know, most of the time when you go on-site, there's a conflict between an imperfect domain, most clients don't really know their own requirements, and implementation capabilities.

Actually, I think your post is more high-level. Don't worry too much about the downvotes.

Re: What are Forward Deployed Engineers, and why are they so in demand? (2025)

#76
post #13

I remember interviewing at Palantir back when they were making this role popular (probably a decade ago). I wanted to be an SDE and the recruiter kept pushing me towards this “forward deployed engineer” role. After hearing the pitch I went…oh so you want me to be a sales consultant? They did not take this well, I guess because Palantir was trying very hard to convince the world they were a tech unicorn and not a glor…

If you are sales then you get a (hopefully fat) sales commission. If you are forward deployed then you get deployed forward (away from comfortable home office).

Orwellian speak for ... you won't get paid like our base engineers and when we want to get rid of you, we send you to our Siberian customer because you are a forward deployed engineer haha

Still i want to believe i'm wrong and it's a good job.

Re: What are Forward Deployed Engineers, and why are they so in demand? (2025)

#77
post #13

I remember interviewing at Palantir back when they were making this role popular (probably a decade ago). I wanted to be an SDE and the recruiter kept pushing me towards this “forward deployed engineer” role. After hearing the pitch I went…oh so you want me to be a sales consultant? They did not take this well, I guess because Palantir was trying very hard to convince the world they were a tech unicorn and not a glor…

Yeah, I'm reading this and find myself wondering what's so new about this. Haven't tech companies always had this role? I suppose Forward Deployed Engineer sounds more like an engineering role than Sales Consultant, which sounds like you're a salesman rather than an engineer, so it feels to me like this is mostly PR to make the role more attractive to engineers.

It's certainly working on me, because I like talking with stakeholders and identifying problems I can solve, and I don't like sales. I'm far more likely to apply as Forward Deployed Engineer.

Re: What are Forward Deployed Engineers, and why are they so in demand? (2025)

#78
post #13

I remember interviewing at Palantir back when they were making this role popular (probably a decade ago). I wanted to be an SDE and the recruiter kept pushing me towards this “forward deployed engineer” role. After hearing the pitch I went…oh so you want me to be a sales consultant? They did not take this well, I guess because Palantir was trying very hard to convince the world they were a tech unicorn and not a glor…

I think an FDE is a post sales thing. It’s basically the sale has been done and as a company you don’t have enough expertise to scale what you bought.

Re: What are Forward Deployed Engineers, and why are they so in demand? (2025)

#79
post #33

These used to be called "Sales Engineers" but Palantir wanted something more militant sounding. It's a shame others picked this gross term up and started using it.

Used to? Are you implying that the term “Sales Engineers” does not exist anymore?

They used to be called "Sales Engineers". They still are, but they used to, too.
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