What is a Forward Deployed Engineer?
FDE, so hot right now
If you’ve been paying attention lately, there’s been one engineering discipline that is all the rage, OpenAI has FDEs, Ramp’s got them, hilariously enough, there’s even Salesforce FDEs.
So what are they? What’s the point? Do you need a team of FDEs? I run the Forward Deployed Engineering team at Thoughtful AI, with over 100 engineers across dozens of projects, so let’s walk through it together!
The History of Forward Deployed
No post on the FDE discipline is complete without paying respect to the grand-daddy that started it all, Palantir. The first company to have actual Forward Deployed Engineers, in their own words it’s about “building the blueprint, embedding these engineers” in the customer work.
The namesake is a direct reference to this, they are deployed into the actual customer environment, giving them the ability to understand what actually needs to be built, helping onboard/train customers, and helping feed the product vision. They can also make quick work of the last-mile work, like wrangling data, plugging in integrations, and ensuring that the customer is seeing actual value from a deployment.
FDE v.s. Solutions Engineer
Another role that sometimes comes up in this sphere is that of a Solutions Engineer. However, these are distinctly separate roles. A Solution Engineer is more anchored around a particular product they are selling. It would be more unusual to see them building anything ad-hoc, or doing extensive work in instrumenting customer data for a deployment.
The way I keep the contrast in my mind is, you wouldn’t expect a Solutions Engineer to spend that much time and effort post-sale. Sure, they’ll be there to onboard, design and incorporate the product into the customer environment, but they won’t quite lean as far, as deep, or as broad into the project as an FDE. Their tenure is shorter lived.
FDE v.s. Sales Engineer
In contrast here, a Sales Engineer has an aperture more gravitationally centered on the pre-deployment step. They are there to drive demos, configure some proof-of-concepts, and provide a rich set of readouts in terms of what the sale will mean for the customer in terms of end-value.
You might bring an FDE onto a sales call, and FDEs certainly are customer facing, but they are not quite the quasi-salesperson that a Sales Engineer will be. This is reflected in the approach, personality and even compensation strategy. A Sales Engineer will likely have a commission, and be more focused on closing a sale. A Forward Deployed Engineer will be focused on actually delivering that value, and improving the product by acting as a direct feedback bridge.
FDE: The Good, the Bad, the Ugly
Like any discipline or thought framework, a Forward Deployed approach is not inherently a good or bad thing. It has tradeoffs, and run correctly it can be a massive driver for generating value. On the other hand, its core nature can be twisted and malformed to the point it hobbles the company’s future.
The Good
At its best, the Forward Deployed team can turn chaos into order. For example, if the customer’s setup is messy (it will be), if it lacks SOPs (it does), and if the product is deployed into a non-technical environment (very common), the FDE team can be like having Seal Team Six step in and secure the package. It’s the surgeons performing an elegant operation, drastically increasing the patient’s chances.
Not only will a great Forward Deployed team ensure that the company’s products and services have maximal value for the customer, they’ll also be improving the core product. In an ideal scenario, the FDEs on a project will be the perfect instrument to capture what the core team should build next. They are the boots on the ground, directly feeding intelligence, engineers collecting requirements for other engineers to build.
This is beautiful, because anyone who’s worked on a team building, selling or deploying products understands that those are all separate things. The closer they all are, the more amazing (and profitable) the outcome will be. Who better to figure out what is missing, what to build next, than those who are on the frontlines?
Lastly, the Forward Deployed Engineering team is that, a team of engineers. For sufficiently complex operations and products (like with Palantir and OpenAI), no matter how good the core offering is, there will always, always be a last-mile problem. It will be in this particular customer’s specifications, in that project’s one-off security requirements, and in the way this hospital system deployment stores all its input data in over 100 spreadsheets.
An elegant Swiss Army Knife, the FDE team ensures that your masterful train deployment doesn’t get completely blocked due to an unfortunate large boulder in the path of the tracks.
The Bad
So you might think, this Forward Deployed thing sounds amazing, what is the downside?
Like any tactic, done mindlessly or overly done, an FDE team can also cripple a company. This might sound strange from someone who heads a large FDE team, but it’s clear that without the appropriate direction and scope, you might end up in a Faustian bargain.
Stated clearly, a Forward Deployed team must be laser focused on preventing the company from gradually falling into what I call the “services trap”. This is because the goal of being Forward Deployed is to glue the last mile, but also to come back to HQ with the learnings to build the machines to deploy next time.
It is really, really easy for that last part to be forgotten, and not even on purpose. It is a situation that requires eternal vigilance. If you aren’t building scale (i.e. software) to make those challenges tractable, or automatable, you are just-another-consulting company.
This is the reason a “bad smell” for an FDE team is for the company to sell “seats” or “headcount” in terms of FDEs assigned to a delivery.
The way I’ve summarized it for the team is:
“A good FDE delivers their project, a great FDE helps others deliver theirs.”
We must build the tools and capabilities within the company’s armory, that is what achieves scale, favorable unit economics, and results in an actual tech company. If you’re just selling FDE time, that’s a consulting company, not a tech company.
The Ugly
Finally, even in the ideal scenario where the FDE team is helping drive massive scale and margin expansion, there is an undeniable truth.
That truth being that Forward Deployed work is hard, it’s ugly, it’s tough, and it’s a bloody affair. Much like the all out slug-fest we see Silvester Stallone undergo at the end of Rocky and Rocky II (let’s not talk about the other ones), it is about strategy, endurance and resilience.
Ironically, this is not the result of any particular adversary. After all, the company that buys the product wants to succeed, the FDE team wants to deliver, the vendor is aligned, everyone wants this thing to win. But life is complicated, and solving tough problems is tough.
Even the most well designed products working in sufficiently sophisticated problem spaces will need setup. No two companies run their operations in the exact same way. Like a neighborhood of custom homes, each one has their clean spots, their accents, and their diligence issues. Each company has their own employees and history as well.
All of these factors form a confluence of complexity for tech product deployments. An FDE must be ready to play the following roles:
Detective
FDEs cannot rely on facts at face value, they must verify them. Similar to a detective, even witnesses trying to help you will sometimes forget or misremember. An FDE must investigate and find out the exact problem and its set of challenges, often coming across contradictory information, sometimes from the same source!
Salesperson
Ultimately, the FDE is customer facing, which means they need to be good stewards of the company’s brand and products. They do not get the luxury of being silo’d away from the customer, and all the complexities those interactions bring. They’ll have to be kind and empathetic, even in grueling situations.
Lawyer
An FDE is the technical stakeholder closest to the project delivery. They are responsible for educating those on both sides as to the challenges, and the downstream risks of every material decision. An expert advisor, they will then have to figure out what’s possible and doable, and what the path forward actually is.
Architect
While the FDE is provided with a stockade of technical tools and solutions, every delivery will require a different configuration. Like a house’s architect, they often have to take raw materials, specialized instruments, and amalgamate that into an actual building. Oh, and this has to be done while keeping the house builder happy, and the project within budget!
Mason
The FDE also implements the actual integration. As a mason lays bricks, the FDE will write code. This requires strategic and tactical expertise. From the blueprint to the brick, the FDE needs to be able to dive into the specific details, test them, deploy them, and ensure they are stable.
Conclusion
After working in the software industry for nearly a decade and a half, I can say that the Forward Deployed Engineering role is quite unique. It requires a rare and compelling cocktail of skills and aptitudes. As a team, it can be an extremely powerful accelerant for a company’s growth, or a caustic, dangerous agent.
For those who have the risk profile, skills and desire to be the tip of the spear, it’s an amazing role!