Forward Deployed Engineering

Originally published on Next Play The Bottom Line A Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) is a software engineer who owns customer outcomes - not just satisfaction scores or relationships, but actual results customers achieve with the software. This distinction fundamentally changes everything about how engineers approach their work. The critical insight is that you cannot easily hire your way to a true FDE organization. This skill set is too rare and specific, dependent on experiences most engineers never have. Traditional engineering roles insulate engineers from customer reality. The only way to build an FDE organization is to take talented people and put them through experiences that transform how they think about building software. ...