What is an FDE? Forward deployed engineer?
You may have started seeing a new job title appearing in tech, particularly around AI companies: The FDE or Forward Deployed Engineer. So what actually is one? The easiest way to explain it is: software engineer + solutions engineer + consultant + product thinker.
An FDE is a technically strong engineer who works closely with customers to understand a real business problem and then helps build the solution. That might mean writing code, connecting APIs, working with data, building integrations or creating new AI functionality.
Palantir, in the US is probably the company most associated with the Forward Deployed Engineer model, embedding engineers closely with customers to understand their problems and build solutions alongside them.
Why are FDEs becoming more common?
AI is probably a big reason. We can now have AI to write code which is quick & cheap but where are the bottlenecks? With the customer data and systems… AI products can look brilliant in a demo, but getting them working properly inside a real business is much harder.
And that’s where the bottlenecks arrive with existing systems, messy data, security, processes and people to deal with. Someone has to connect all those dots.
That's where the FDE comes in.
A good FDE needs:
strong software engineering skills
excellent communication
curiosity
commercial awareness
comfort with ambiguity
a get-stuff-done attitude
It's probably not a completely new type of job, as we've had solutions engineers, technical consultants, data migration consultants (which we were recently hiring in Christchurch) and Implementation Engineers for years. But the lines between engineering, product and customer-facing roles are definitely starting to blur.
With AI helping engineers build faster, people who can understand the customer and build the solution are becoming increasingly valuable.
I suspect we'll be hearing a lot more about FDEs in the Christchurch & New Zealand market very soon :-)
I’m Paul, lover of coffee, dogs, biking, surfing & skiing. Founder & Principal Consultant of Sunstone, an IT Recruitment and People & Culture Consultancy based in Christchurch & South Island of New Zealand.
We specialise in recruiting jobs around the product development lifecycle in software, hardware & engineering! We have also made successful appointments within AI, hardware & firmware engineering, mechanical engineering, IoT, electrical & electronics engineering, web & digital marketing and senior leadership roles.