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.
Companies like Palantir, OpenAI, and Anduril use this approach to achieve dramatically higher product adoption rates.
What You’ll Learn
This 30-minute lesson covers the core FDE playbook:
- Detecting real customer problems — how to separate signal from noise when users tell you what they want vs. what they actually need
- The four core FDE moves — detect problems, demonstrate through action, control the narrative, and ship fast while maintaining production quality
- A structured week-by-week playbook for developing field-based customer instinct
- How AI is changing the FDE role and what that means for engineers building products today
Background
I built and led Project Frontline at Palantir, training 250+ engineers in the FDE methodology. Alumni now work at OpenAI, xAI, Anduril, and other AI-focused companies. I also led FDE practices at Citadel before co-founding Kepler.
Who This Is For
Whether you’re a product engineer, technical founder, or engineering leader — if you ship software to customers, the FDE mindset will change how you think about building products. The lesson also covers how FDE differs from professional services and how to balance customer wants vs. actual needs.
The lesson is free and includes Q&A. You can watch it on Maven.
Questions about FDE or product engineering? Feel free to reach out.