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.
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Forward Deployed
On-Site vs Remote FDE Work: Travel Realities, Trust Building, and Impact
Forward Deployed Engineers face a unique tension between on-site immersion and remote execution. We break down the travel cadence, trust-building tactics, and compensation realities for UK-based FDEs.
9 min read
Forward Deployed
Writing Customer-Facing Technical Docs That Actually Get Read and Used
Stop writing documentation that gathers digital dust. A playbook for Forward Deployed Engineers to craft customer-facing technical docs that reduce support tickets and drive adoption using the 4 C's framework.
7 min read
Forward Deployed
What a Forward Deployed Engineer Actually Does in a Week: A Diary Breakdown
A real, unvarnished diary of an FDE's week: on-site debugging, C-suite trust-building, scrappy code, and the travel cadence. No theory, just the day-to-day.
10 min read
AI News
Llama.cpp Deep Dive: Run Production-Grade LLMs on a Single Workstation
llama.cpp compresses frontier AI into a single C++ binary. Here's how it works under the hood, why it obliterates GPU vendor lock-in, and how engineers can deploy it today.
12 min read
AI News
Why AI Text Watermarks Will Always Fail: A Technical Breakdown for Engineers
Text AI watermarks are marketed as a defense against deepfakes, but they are trivial to remove. This engineer's deep-dive explains why statistical signals in token selection are fundamentally broken.
8 min read
AI News
49KB per Log Line: How systemd-journald Wrecks Your Disk and How to Tame It
A single journald log line can cost 49KB+ on ext4 and 110KB+ on btrfs. Unpack the filesystem-wrecking physics, learn to measure the real cost, and apply surgical fixes before your production SSDs burn out.
10 min read
AI News
Google's Homomorphic Encryption: Private AI Engineers Can Deploy Today
Google's open-source HE compilers and transpilers let you run ML inference on encrypted data without exposing plaintext. Here's what changed, why it matters for FDEs shipping on-prem, and how to try it now.
11 min read
AI News
GLM-5.3’s Emergent Cyber Skills: What Security Engineers Need to Know
GLM-5.3 demonstrates emergent cyber capabilities like blind SQL injection and rootkit detection without explicit training. Here’s what that means for security engineers and FDEs working at the frontier.
8 min read
Build Guides
Build a Smart Clipboard That Summarizes and Translates with Cloudflare Workers AI
Build a zero-cost desktop utility that watches your clipboard and uses Llama 3 on Cloudflare Workers AI to summarize or translate any copied text with a single hotkey.
9 min read
Guides
AI Machine Learning Engineer Bootcamp: What a Strong Curriculum Covers in 2026
A strong AI ML engineer bootcamp goes beyond Jupyter notebooks. Learn the exact curriculum, production engineering skills, and portfolio projects required to get hired.
9 min read
Guides
AI Engineer Career Salary: 2026 Trajectory, Growth & Earning Potential
An engineer-to-engineer breakdown of AI career salary data: from $90K entry-level to $500K+ principal roles. Covers equity, hourly rates, monthly take-home, and the skills that unlock top-tier compensation.
7 min read
Guides
AI Engineer Career Path at Google: Skills, Ladder, and Progression
A no-fluff guide to the AI Engineer career path at Google. Covers the full ladder from L3 to L8, required skills, interview prep, and salary data.
10 min read
Guides
Palantir Forward Deployed Engineer Compensation: Base, Bonus & Equity 2025
Deep dive into Palantir Forward Deployed Engineer compensation for 2025. Real numbers on base salary, bonus, equity, and total comp from entry-level to senior.
7 min read
Guides
Forward Deployed Engineer Salary at Anthropic: 2025 Compensation Breakdown
Deep dive into Anthropic's Forward Deployed Engineer salary bands: base pay $250K-$375K, total comp reaching $550K+, plus equity structure, leveling, and how to negotiate.
8 min read
Guides
Forward Deployed Software Engineer New Grad Salary & Compensation 2026
Real FDE new grad salary data: base pay, equity, signing bonuses, and per-hour breakdowns. See how Palantir stacks against startups and FAANG for forward deployed roles.
12 min read
Guides
Palantir Forward Deployed Engineer Interview Questions: The Complete 2025 Prep Guide
Master the Palantir FDSE interview loop with real questions from each stage. Learn decomposition, deployment strategy, and system design tactics to signal like a forward deployed engineer, not a generic SWE.
14 min read
Guides
Forward Deployed Engineer Job Description: Core Duties & Responsibilities
Decode the forward deployed engineer job description: core duties, required skills, salary bands, and how FDE differs from solutions engineering. A zero-fluff guide.
10 min read
Guides
Forward Deployed Engineer Prep: Technical & Behavioral Readiness Plan
A tactical, no-fluff guide to forward deployed engineer prep: master the technical stack, behavioral signals, and portfolio artifacts that win FDE offers at top-tier companies.
10 min read
Guides
Google FDE Interview Blind Prep: The Signal-First Strategy
Cut through the noise of Google FDE interview Blind threads. A tactical prep guide for the Forward Deployed Engineer loop focused on building signal over memorization.
11 min read
Forward Deployed
Scaling Yourself: When an FDE Hands Off to Core Engineering
Learn the concrete signals, code artifacts, and ontology design rules that transform a Palantir FDE prototype into a scalable core engineering handoff. Real workflows, no hype.
9 min read
Forward Deployed
How Palantir-Style FDEs Embed with Customers to Unlock Technical Wins
A concrete playbook for engineers on how Palantir-style Forward Deployed Engineers embed directly inside customer operations to diagnose bottlenecks, ship high-signal prototypes, and secure technical wins that no slide deck ever could.
8 min read
Forward Deployed
On-Site vs Remote FDE Work: Travel Realities and Building Trust in Person
Forward Deployed Engineers face a unique hybrid: not fully remote, not always on-site. A breakdown of travel cadences, per-diem economics, and the trust architecture that dictates when you fly.
8 min read
Forward Deployed
Case Study: Deploying an LLM Feature at an Enterprise Customer Without Breaking Prod
A step-by-step FDE case study on shipping a secure, on-premise LLM summarization feature for a Fortune 500 bank. Covers architecture, guardrails, deployment trade-offs, and the career impact of owning high-stakes enterprise delivery.
8 min read
Forward Deployed
The FDE Weekly Operating Rhythm: A Diary-Based Breakdown of Real Work
A concrete, diary-based breakdown of what a Forward Deployed Engineer actually does in a week—from on-site debugging to pipeline architecture and comp negotiation.
8 min read
1,162 articles and counting