The FDE Coach blog · new articles every day
Practical guides for engineers who ship AI.
Step-by-step builds with free AI tools, what just shipped in AI and why it matters, and Forward Deployed Engineer playbooks on interviews, pay and client work.
FDE playbooks, case studies, and career deep-dives.
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Forward Deployed
Writing Customer-Facing Technical Docs That Actually Get Read by Enterprise Users
Stop shipping docs that engineering loves and customers ignore. Learn the enterprise FDE playbook for writing technical documentation that busy stakeholders actually read, trust, and act on.
9 min read
Forward Deployed
The Highest-Leverage Skills for a Forward Deployed Engineer in the AI Era
AI didn't kill the FDE role—it weaponized it. Master the 5 highest-leverage skills that separate operators from spectators: prompt engineering as system design, building retrieval-augmented evaluation pipelines, and the art of enterprise-grade prototype-to-production handoffs.
9 min read
Forward Deployed
Building Trust with Non-Technical Stakeholders as an FDE: The Trust Battery
Concrete tactics for FDEs to translate technical complexity into business trust. Learn to manage the 'Trust Battery,' run high-signal demos, and turn ambiguous requirements into revenue-retaining partnerships.
7 min read
Forward Deployed
The FDE Portfolio: What to Build to Get Hired at Top AI and Enterprise Companies
Stop building toy apps. Reverse-engineer the FDE portfolio that gets offers from Palantir, Scale AI, and top startups. Real project specs, technical decisions, and the signals hiring managers actually read.
11 min read
Forward Deployed
The FDE Interview Loop: Deployment Scenarios, Systems Design & Customer Empathy Prep
Master the Forward Deployed Engineer interview with concrete prep for deployment scenarios, systems design, and customer empathy. Real workflows, comp data, and no fluff.
9 min read
Forward Deployed
On-Site vs Remote FDE Work: Travel Realities, Burnout, and Making It Sustainable
A field manual for Forward Deployed Engineers navigating the on-site vs remote decision. Concrete travel schedules, compensation data, burnout prevention tactics, and a sustainability framework for high-trust technical roles.
12 min read
Forward Deployed
How FDEs Work with Product and Engineering After the Enterprise Sale
A concrete playbook for Forward Deployed Engineers navigating the post-sale enterprise landscape: bridging gap analysis, roadmap influence, and production hand-offs without burning the team.
9 min read
Forward Deployed
How Palantir-Style FDEs Embed with Customers to Unlock Technical Value
A concrete playbook on the Palantir Forward Deployed Engineer model: how FDEs embed on-site, navigate messy data, build trust, and ship value in weeks—not quarters. Includes real workflows, comp context, and a maturity model for scaling beyond the hero engineer.
10 min read
Forward Deployed
Scaling Yourself: When an FDE Hands Off to Core Engineering for Productionization
The handoff from Forward Deployed Engineer to core engineering is where prototypes die or scale. Learn the concrete artifacts, architecture decisions, and comp frameworks that make productionization a clean kill, not a boomerang.
10 min read
Forward Deployed
FDE vs Solutions Engineer vs Sales Engineer: Responsibilities and Boundaries
A concrete breakdown of Forward Deployed Engineer, Solutions Engineer, and Sales Engineer roles: where they overlap, where they diverge, and how to navigate the boundary lines in high-stakes technical sales.
14 min read
Forward Deployed
From Messy Problem to Shipped Prototype: The FDE Weekly Workflow
A concrete playbook for the Forward Deployed Engineer's weekly sprint: how to scope ambiguous customer pain, build a high-signal prototype, and navigate enterprise constraints without burning the week on polish.
9 min read
Forward Deployed
The FDE Interview Loop: Systems Design, Deployment, and Customer Empathy Prep
A concrete playbook for the Forward Deployed Engineer interview covering the deployment debugging gauntlet, customer empathy scenarios, and system design trade-offs. Real workflows, no hype.
9 min read
Forward Deployed
From Messy Problem to Shipped Prototype: The FDE Weekly Workflow
A concrete, week-in-the-life playbook for Forward Deployed Engineers. See how to take a vague enterprise customer pain point, scope it ruthlessly, build a prototype with real tools like n8n and Postgres, and present a path to production—all in 5 days.
9 min read
Forward Deployed
Debugging in the Dark: How FDEs Solve Customer Issues Without Environment Access
A Forward Deployed Engineer's playbook for diagnosing production issues when you can't touch the environment. From log forensics to USB debugging on broken screens, learn the high-signal workflows that turn black-box failures into solved cases.
12 min read
Forward Deployed
Case Study: Deploying an LLM Feature at a Risk-Averse Enterprise Customer
A step-by-step engineering breakdown of shipping a customer-facing LLM summarization feature inside a Fortune 500 bank. Covers air-gapped deployment, RAG architecture, hallucination guardrails, and the FDE comp context.
8 min read
Forward Deployed
Senior FDE Salary at Databricks, Palantir, and Nvidia: Real Compensation Data
Dissecting real FDE compensation at Databricks, Palantir, and Nvidia. We break down base, equity, and the premium for engineering managers who bridge the gap between product and the battlefield.
8 min read
Forward Deployed
Case Study: Deploying an LLM Feature at an Enterprise Customer in 3 Weeks
A concrete walkthrough of shipping a secure RAG pipeline inside a Fortune 500 VPC. Real architecture, prompt engineering, and stakeholder management from a Forward Deployed Engineer.
9 min read
Forward Deployed
How Palantir-Style FDEs Embed with Customers: Ontology, Ownership, and Operational Friction
A concrete breakdown of how Forward Deployed Engineers embed inside customer operations, model their world with an ontology, own outcomes, and turn operational friction into software.
10 min read
Forward Deployed
The Highest-Leverage Skills for a Forward Deployed Engineer in the AI Era
Stop chasing every new model release. The highest-leverage FDE skills in the AI era are systems thinking, ruthless scope control, and building trust through concrete deliverables. Here's the exact skill stack that compounds.
10 min read
Forward Deployed
The FDE Portfolio: What to Build to Get Hired in the AI Era
Stop building to-do apps. A concrete guide to the 4 portfolio artifacts that signal FDE readiness—live data connectors, AI wrappers, demo scaffolds, and internal tools—with real scenarios and tools.
11 min read
Forward Deployed
Scaling Yourself: When an FDE Prototype Becomes a Core Engineering Handoff
Moving from quick win to production-grade system is the hardest transition in Forward Deployed Engineering. Here's the concrete playbook for scaling yourself without becoming the bottleneck.
10 min read
Forward Deployed
The Tools an FDE Ships With: Data Connectors, Integration Wrappers, and Demo Scaffolds
Forget polished SDKs. A Forward Deployed Engineer ships with a grab bag of tactical code: high-fidelity data connectors, thin integration wrappers, and demo scaffolds that close deals. Here's the exact toolkit.
12 min read
Forward Deployed
What a Forward Deployed Engineer Actually Does in a Week: Standups, Debugging, and Shipping
A real-world week-in-the-life of a Forward Deployed Engineer: from customer standups and debugging integration hell to shipping production code. Concrete workflows, tools, and comp numbers.
9 min read
Forward Deployed
How Palantir-Style FDEs Embed: Ownership, Ontology, and Operational Friction
A concrete playbook for engineers pursuing the Forward Deployed role. We break down the ontology-first mindset, the compensation reality, and how to weaponize operational friction to ship prototypes that actually survive contact with the enterprise.
9 min read
345 articles and counting