Presented at AI Engineer. Most companies hire forward deployed engineers as an extension of go-to-market: a technical body to keep a large account happy. That’s the wrong frame. FDE is a product strategy. The job is to find the real problem, ship the smallest thing that solves it, and turn what you learned into leverage for the product. ...
Most AI projects don’t fail at the model. They fail somewhere between the demo that impressed everyone and the system that has to survive contact with a real customer’s data, workflows, and definitions. I published a new LinkedIn Learning course on the role that closes that gap: Forward Deployed Engineering in the Age of AI. Why This Course Exists AI deployment differs fundamentally from a traditional SaaS rollout. A SaaS product is largely the same on day one for every customer. An AI system is not — its behavior depends on the customer’s data quality, their vocabulary, their edge cases, and their tolerance for being wrong. That means the work of making it succeed happens in the field, not at headquarters. ...
Part of Lenny Rachitsky’s “The AI-Native Product Manager” free workshop series on Maven. Most products fail not because of bad engineering, but because teams build the wrong thing. They either overbuild features nobody asked for or underbuild solutions that miss the real problem. Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) is the antidote. What is FDE? Forward Deployed Engineering is a methodology where technical teams embed directly with customers to witness how software meets reality. Instead of building from assumptions, FDEs develop customer instinct by being in the field — watching real users interact with real products under real conditions. ...
Originally published on Next Play If you work in tech, you should learn about Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE). It’s quickly become one of the most popular roles that nearly all fast-growing AI companies are looking for…at the same time, it’s the type of role very few people and companies seem to actually understand. I designed Project Frontline at Palantir, a program that sent over 250 engineers into live customer deployments. Those engineers are now at OpenAI, xAI, Anduril, and dozens of leading companies. ...
Originally streamed live on August 3, 2023 - LinkedIn Learning’s “The Future in Tech” series Data engineering is the unsung hero fueling the rapid growth and consumption of artificial intelligence. It transforms AI’s potential into reality, driving digital innovation and reshaping the world. In this comprehensive discussion, we explore how data engineering unlocks and enables democratized use of Artificial Intelligence. Video: The Future in Tech - Data Engineering and AI Discussion (1,668 views) ...