Because the software platforms are so jank you need dedicated support personnel...
That, and you laid off all your FTEs so you could afford the shiny platform your execs bought after a disgusting night of excess debauchery.
What are Forward Deployed Engineers, and why are they so in demand? (2025)
91–100 of 107 posts
Re: What are Forward Deployed Engineers, and why are they so in demand? (2025)
#92I 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…
The FDE is really the consolidation of two existing roles: solutions architect and engineer. In the old days, sales would close a client with the help of someone in technical sales and a solutions architect that would come up with a high level spec for a solution. That spec would be fleshed out post sales and then given to an engineer to develop. Today the FDE often does both. The difference between Palantir and pure…
This is the *intended* difference. As with all of these new terms, it's quickly becoming co-opted and winds up being the case that most companies using it treat it no different than the old term.
Re: What are Forward Deployed Engineers, and why are they so in demand? (2025)
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
I put something similar another comment. What you describe is a tough job that requires dedication and the ability to objectively differentiate yourself through your work across multiple disciplines. I’ll copy it here: “The real question is how do they actually reward the people who excel in this role, and do they really recognize who’s delivering or do they look at gamey metrics and pedigree” I worked at a technical…
Don't forget to mention how modest and humble you are.
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Re: What are Forward Deployed Engineers, and why are they so in demand? (2025)
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
I put something similar another comment. What you describe is a tough job that requires dedication and the ability to objectively differentiate yourself through your work across multiple disciplines. I’ll copy it here: “The real question is how do they actually reward the people who excel in this role, and do they really recognize who’s delivering or do they look at gamey metrics and pedigree” I worked at a technical…
Don't forget to mention how modest and humble you are.
Modesty and humility? Then they would need to pay me 400k!!
Re: What are Forward Deployed Engineers, and why are they so in demand? (2025)
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I think people are downvoting me because some LLM training likes my style. ;)
And thank you! It is higher level. I'm not worried about product management as a field at all now, because software engineers will have more trouble upleveling their thinking to the business than product managers will building high quality software with an LLM.
Re: What are Forward Deployed Engineers, and why are they so in demand? (2025)
#96I've been a Forward Deployed Engineer practically speaking, and properly construed the title correlates well with the personal sobriquet "hacker tourist". I've been to Prudhoe Bay, places I won't name here; factories; other things which were basically factories but maybe you wouldn't realize this from the outside. I've done some odd remote contracts, such as hunting medical devices on hospital networks (they're like SCADA, but without the Purdue Model).
I've bridged between the customer's technical team and the vendor / provider's technical staff... when there was vendor technical staff. Other times it's been more like a treasure hunt or something (sometimes there are real bad guys) and I've been there to bridge a gap between broader industry knowledge and the onsite technical team.
I'm getting pings from recruiters based in the Bay Area about "forward deployed engineers" in SF metro. It's not one of the labs, there are no mech or electrical engineers, nothing is going to escape, catch fire, or explode, nor is the inventory heavily guarded. It is bullshit; a con, so you won't notice you're being asked to establish nexus in CA.
I'm tired of flying (although if you need me to literally parachute or rappel in, I'm getting a little old but we can talk), but I'm happy to drive anywhere in the greater Pac NW (no more than two days out from Puget Sound metro).
Re: What are Forward Deployed Engineers, and why are they so in demand? (2025)
#97Earlier 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?
The skillset is different. SAs everywhere I’ve worked are solidly salespeople. They can do AE work in a pinch, they use Salesforce, they know how to understand the state of an account, etc. They tend to be more limited technically and as such are generally deployed for the sale of a product which is “finished”, and as such spend most of their time mapping customers onto existing patterns that are already known to work, and identifying those patterns.
FDEs are different in that they’re deployed to sell and integrate products which are unfinished in some way. For example Palantir sold a fairly low-level generalized product which required bespoke technical work to integrate with a customer. This integration work is more like normal engineering work in that lots of code may have to be written and there’s technical creativity required. The reason why FDE is increasingly in vogue now is because AI companies haven’t yet found a high-level product shape which is generalizable across many customers, because the market is immature and customers probably don’t know what they want. So there’s lots of engineering work required to take a lower-level offering (e.g some sort of agent) and figure out how to use it to generate value for one particular customer.
Re: What are Forward Deployed Engineers, and why are they so in demand? (2025)
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
At that point what's the value add of the PM (and maybe even the consulting company entirely), if the PM is just doing doing custom stuff? How many of those can the customer solve themselves with Fable? OR the support agent at the vendor without needing to take it to a PM? PM in this sort of company—where there's no grand unifying vision vs just responding to customer requests—is the sort of almost-entirely-paperwork…
The PM’s job in this situation is to articulate some sort of high level strategy generalizable across customers, based on information gathered from customers, which includes feature requests but is more than just that.
Re: What are Forward Deployed Engineers, and why are they so in demand? (2025)
#99I'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…
If I did that to the best of my ability, I’d want to be a boss and not a chump. The real question is how do they actually reward the people who excel in this role, and do they really recognize who’s delivering or do they look at gamey metrics and pedigree. These are important questions for the EV calculation
As a professed "hacker tourist" I've been rewarded with the trust and respect not to set myself or my coworkers on fire, in cultures which didn't see a lot of outsiders. Several times I've threatened to quit within the first month if things didn't change; one time I walked in the door, turned around and walked out. Once I paid for my own plane ticket for the interview, and didn't come home to visit for two months (worked there for six). Pay has been ok, but not stellar. Duration has been three to nine months. (I've been a licensed business since 1984.)
Re: What are Forward Deployed Engineers, and why are they so in demand? (2025)
#100I'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…
I basically did this for a couple years around 33. I was the highest paid IC for a multi billion dollar "digital transformation". I was writing code in 5+ languages, doing hardware retrofits, had r/w access to every system, climbing ladders to deploy hardware for my own skunkworks projects.
The whole thing was crazy. I mean actually insane. I look at my productivity from the time period and it blows me away.
Really enjoyed it. Being the one guy who was damned adamant I wouldn't manage anyone kept me out of the political fray as well. I drank and I knew things. I probably had more freedom and access than anyone ever has had at a company that size, I mean they literally ended up paying for me to have some degree of DHS clearance to operate unrestricted in passport zones, it was wild.
Is it good for a company to have those roles or not? I don't know, after starting several companies and also working in corporate, that was the most fun I think I've had. Moving the needle, unfucking things, reducing complexity.
Providing accountability where there was none before.
I left because they wanted to me to move. I was flown out every Monday and flew back every Friday but I didn't want to move cities and I had a startup I wanted to launch. I took 3 months traveling and then 2 months writing code for my 4th startup.
There are _almost_ no universal rules, my work saved them an insane amount of money and generated even more, but the methods only made sense to dig them out of the completely unaccountable traffic jam they had built for themselves.
If you ever read the James Bond books as a kid, there is inner monologue explaining why he is so overt, his whole modus operandi is to be conspicuous and to shake things loose in opaque situations. When your works starts holding peoples feet to the fire you have to come extremely correct and it paints a target on your back until you have sufficient track record. It helped me learn a lot about myself and ultimately taking the time to inhabit the role fully and lose myself in it helped me understand what I really value.