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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Guides
How to Land Forward Deployed Engineer Jobs at Google: The Prep Strategy
A field manual for landing forward deployed engineer jobs at Google. Covers the role's reality, salary bands, the interview loop, and a week-by-week prep plan to win the offer.
10 min read
Guides
What Is an AI Engineer Job Salary in 2025? A Data-Driven Breakdown
Cut through the hype. A precise, data-driven analysis of AI engineer salaries in 2025 by role, location, and equity, plus the skills that actually move the needle.
11 min read
Guides
Palantir FDE Interview Process: A Builder's Guide to Every Round
Master the Palantir FDE interview process with this engineer's guide. From the decomp and learning rounds to the on-site build, learn what's actually tested and how to ship instead of just talk.
13 min read
Guides
How to Become a Defence Engineer: Transitioning Your Tech Career in 2025
A practical, zero-fluff guide on how to become a defence engineer. Covers security clearances, in-demand tech stacks, salary data, and the FDE mindset shift required to break into the defence industry.
9 min read
Guides
Forward Deployed Engineer Manager Salary: 2025 Compensation & Career Data
Unpack the forward deployed engineer manager salary for 2025: base, bonus, and equity ranges from startup to Big Tech. Real data on FDE leadership compensation.
11 min read
Guides
AI Engineer Interview Questions: 45+ Technical Concepts & System Design Answers
Master your next AI engineering interview with 45+ technical questions covering LLM architectures, RAG, MLOps, and system design. Includes expert answers and real-world scenarios.
12 min read
Forward Deployed
FDE Compensation Bands & Negotiation Tactics: Palantir to OpenAI in 2026
A concrete breakdown of forward deployed engineer salary bands from Palantir to OpenAI, including equity structures, negotiation scripts, and career leverage.
8 min read
Forward Deployed
The Highest-Leverage Skills for an FDE in the AI Era Beyond Prompt Engineering
Prompt engineering is table stakes. The real FDE career edge lies in evaluation-driven engineering, building agent-native UIs, and deploying secure AI systems behind firewalls. Here's the concrete skillset that unlocks a $200K+ AI engineering career.
8 min read
Forward Deployed
What a Forward Deployed Engineer Actually Does in a Week: A Time Audit
A concrete, hour-by-hour breakdown of a Forward Deployed Engineer's week. From debugging customer firewalls to shipping prototypes, see the real workflow, tools, and comp data behind the title.
9 min read
Forward Deployed
How to Break Into FDE Roles from a Backend or Frontend Background
Bridge from backend or frontend engineering to Forward Deployed roles. Real workflows, compensation context, and a concrete upskilling path without the hype.
10 min read
Forward Deployed
How Forward Deployed Engineers Turn a Messy Customer Problem into a Shipped Prototype in a Week
A concrete playbook for Forward Deployed Engineers (FDEs) on scoping, building, and shipping AI prototypes under enterprise constraints in one week. Covers discovery, tech stack selection, and stakeholder management.
8 min read
Forward Deployed
Case Study: Deploying an LLM Feature Behind a Fortune 500 Firewall in 2 Weeks
A real playbook for shipping an on-premises LLM feature when the customer says 'no external APIs.' Covers air-gapped Kubernetes, model selection, and the FDE comp reality.
6 min read
Forward Deployed
The Palantir-Style FDE Embed: How to Operate Inside a Customer's Security Perimeter
A concrete playbook for engineers on embedding inside a customer's air-gapped network. Covers physical logistics, secure toolchains, offline-first architecture, and the comp/career reality of the Palantir-style Forward Deployed Engineer.
9 min read
Forward Deployed
What a Forward Deployed Engineer Actually Does in a Week: Beyond the Job Description
Forget the sanitized JD. Here is the raw, unvarnished reality of an FDE's week: fighting VPNs, mutating code in hospital basements, and the high-stakes balance of comp vs. burnout. Real workflows only.
7 min read
AI News
OpenChamber Rethinks the IDE as an Agent-Native Workspace Beyond the Chat Sidebar
OpenChamber is a new agentic development environment that treats AI agents as first-class citizens in the workspace, not just chat sidebar add-ons. Here's why that matters for engineers shipping production code.
9 min read
AI News
Triton Brings DX11 to QEMU: A Practical Leap for Windows Dev Environments on Mac/Linux
Triton is a new open-source DirectX 11 driver for QEMU, enabling GPU-accelerated Windows VMs on Apple Silicon and Linux. Here's why it matters for engineers, how to try it, and a balanced look at the state of virtualized graphics.
10 min read
AI News
AI Bots Are DDoSing Bug Trackers: How to Protect Your Public Dev Infrastructure
Scraper bots are crashing critical public dev infrastructure like Gentoo's Bugzilla. Learn how to harden your own services against AI-driven overload with rate limiting, caching, and architecture patterns that work.
11 min read
AI News
Claude Can Now Message Other Claude Sessions: A New Primitive for Agent Orchestration
Anthropic's cross-session messaging lets Claude sessions talk to each other. Here's why this primitive matters for forward-deployed engineers orchestrating complex, multi-agent workflows.
10 min read
AI News
The Real Cost of Copilot: Stop Bleeding Money on AI-Generated Boilerplate
AI coding tools promise speed but often deliver a tax: over-generated boilerplate that inflates codebases, slows CI, and burns credits. Learn the real cost and how to stop it.
10 min read
Build Guides
Build a RAG Chatbot Over Your Own PDFs and Notes Using Qdrant Free Tier
Ship a local RAG pipeline that ingests your PDFs and markdown notes into Qdrant's free vector DB and answers questions with cited sources using Groq's blazing-fast Mixtral inference.
10 min read
Build Guides
Build a RAG Chatbot Over Your PDFs and Notes Using Supabase pgvector
Ship a local RAG chatbot that ingests PDFs and Markdown, stores embeddings in Supabase's free pgvector, and answers questions with Google Gemini—no paid tiers required.
7 min read
Guides
UiPath Forward Deployed Engineer Salary: 2025 Data & Negotiation Guide
Real compensation data for UiPath Forward Deployed Engineers in 2025. Break down base, bonus, equity, and how to negotiate an offer that reflects your hybrid technical-consulting value.
12 min read
Guides
Forward Deployed Engineer Jobs in India: Land Your First Role in 2025
A practical guide to breaking into forward deployed engineer jobs in India. Covers skills, salary data, companies hiring, and a concrete prep roadmap for freshers.
10 min read
Guides
OpenAI FDE Interview Reddit Insights: A Builder's Prep Strategy
Deconstruct real OpenAI Forward Deployed Engineer interview experiences shared on Reddit. Learn the coding, refactoring, and system design patterns you must master.
10 min read
1,162 articles and counting