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
Scaling Yourself: When an FDE Should Hand Off a Prototype to Core Engineering
A concrete playbook for Forward Deployed Engineers on the signals, timing, and mechanics of handing off a prototype. Avoid becoming a bottleneck and learn to scale yourself.
8 min read
Forward Deployed
How Palantir-Style FDEs Embed with Customers: Weekly Rituals That Build Trust
A concrete playbook on Palantir-style FDE customer embedding. Real weekly rituals, war-room mechanics, and trust-building workflows that turn a pilot into a $10M ACV expansion.
8 min read
Forward Deployed
How FDEs Work with Product and Engineering After the Sale Closes
A concrete playbook for Forward Deployed Engineers bridging the gap between a signed contract and production value. Real scenarios, handoff rituals, compensation context, and the tools that prevent post-sale drift.
9 min read
Forward Deployed
Scaling Yourself: When and How an FDE Hands Off to Core Engineering
A tactical playbook for Forward Deployed Engineers on recognizing when a prototype has outgrown you, navigating the handoff to platform teams, and avoiding the 'perma-FDE' trap.
8 min read
Forward Deployed
On-Site vs Remote FDE: Travel Realities, Comp, and What to Expect
A concrete breakdown of on-site vs remote Forward Deployed Engineer life: travel percentages, compensation premiums, trust-building mechanics, and the tools that make or break hybrid workflows.
7 min read
AI News
Petals: Running 100B+ LLMs at Home with a BitTorrent-Style Network
Petals lets you run massive language models like Llama 3 70B on consumer hardware by splitting inference across a decentralized peer-to-peer network. Here's how it works under the hood and how to use it today.
10 min read
AI News
Can a MUD Evaluate LLMs? A $99 Game-Based Benchmark POC
Crucible ran LLMs through a text adventure game for $99. Here's why MUD-based evals expose reasoning gaps standard benchmarks miss, and how you can build your own.
9 min read
AI News
Cactus Hybrid: Teaching Gemma 4 to Say “I Don’t Know”
Cactus Hybrid calibrates Gemma 4’s confidence so it knows when it’s wrong. Here’s how the method works, why it matters for engineers shipping reliable AI, and how to try it today.
7 min read
AI News
Echo Matches Fable at 1/3 the Cost: An Engineer's Blueprint for Open-Weight Distillation
Echo replicates Fable's narrative quality using open-weight models at one-third the cost. A technical deep-dive into distillation, cost benchmarks, and a practical blueprint for engineers to run it themselves.
10 min read
AI News
Kimi K3 vs Fable: Sparse Attention & RL Redefine Reasoning Models
Kimi K3 matches Fable using sparse attention and RL. Here's why that matters for building cheaper, faster reasoning agents and how to run it today.
14 min read
Build Guides
Build a Discord FAQ Bot That Answers From Your Docs (Supabase + OpenRouter)
Deploy a free-tier Discord bot that ingests your docs into Supabase pgvector, retrieves relevant chunks on /faq, and synthesizes answers with a free OpenRouter LLM. Full code included.
10 min read
Build Guides
Build a Resume Tailoring Agent That Rewrites Your CV for Any JD Using Gemini’s Free Tier
Build a Python agent that scrapes any job description URL and uses Google Gemini's free API to rewrite your Markdown resume, matching keywords and generating a tailored PDF. Free-tier, zero-cost, and production-ready.
11 min read
Build Guides
Build a Smart Clipboard: Summarize & Translate Anything You Copy with Ollama
Build a local Python daemon that watches your clipboard, then uses free Ollama models like Llama 3.2 to summarize, translate, or rephrase any text on demand. No cloud, no API keys.
10 min read
Build Guides
Build an On-Call Incident Summarizer with Gemini's Free Tier
Stop dreading postmortems. Build a Python tool that ingests structured logs and Slack threads, then uses Google Gemini's free API to auto-draft a root cause analysis and polished markdown report.
9 min read
Guides
Palantir FDE vs FDSE: Responsibilities, Skills, and Career Paths Compared
A technical deep dive comparing Palantir's Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) and Forward Deployed Software Engineer (FDSE) roles. We break down responsibilities, technical skills, compensation, and career trajectories to help you choose the right path.
10 min read
Guides
Forward Deployed Engineer vs Consultant: Scope, Impact, and Career Paths Compared
Forward Deployed Engineer vs Consultant: Compare technical depth, ownership, compensation, and career trajectories. Learn which path aligns with your engineering ambition.
9 min read
Guides
Forward Deployed Engineer and DevOps: Where Skills Overlap and Diverge
Explore the technical Venn diagram between Forward Deployed Engineering and DevOps. We break down code vs. config, on-call vs. on-site, and tooling to help you pivot.
9 min read
Guides
AI Engineer Career on Reddit: Real Salary, Growth & Day-to-Day Insights
Unfiltered Reddit insights on the AI engineer career path. We analyze real salary data, daily workflows, skill stacks, and growth hacks discussed by practitioners.
9 min read
Guides
Forward Deployed Engineer Qualifications: What Backgrounds Actually Get Hired
A data-backed breakdown of the technical, business, and security skills that land FDE roles. Learn why the best FDEs aren't pure software engineers—and how to build the exact profile top tech firms hire.
12 min read
Guides
Forward Deployed Engineer Work: The Customer Integration & Solution Lifecycle
A deep-dive into the FDE work lifecycle: from scoping a messy customer problem to shipping a maintainable prototype. Tactical guide covering integration patterns, data pipelines, and on-site debugging.
8 min read
Guides
Forward Deployed Engineer Google: Role Overview and Career Path
Deep dive into Google's Forward Deployed Engineer role: responsibilities, compensation, interview prep, and how to build the hybrid engineering/customer skills to land the job.
11 min read
Guides
AI Engineer Job and Salary Guide 2025: Roles, Responsibilities, Pay Scales
Deep dive into the AI engineer job and salary landscape. Covers core responsibilities, required stack, and earning potential across experience levels with actionable data.
7 min read
Guides
Palantir FDE Reddit Insights: Real Experiences, WLB, and Career Growth
Unfiltered analysis of Palantir FDE experiences from Reddit threads. We break down real compensation, work-life balance, interview loops, and exit strategies for Forward Deployed Engineers.
9 min read
Guides
FDE Interview Process: Typical Stages and How to Prepare for Each
Master the FDE interview process with this stage-by-stage breakdown. Learn what to expect in coding, system design, debugging, and executive rounds, plus tactical preparation tips.
8 min read
1,162 articles and counting