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
Writing Customer-Facing Technical Docs That Actually Get Read and Used
Engineers often treat docs as an afterthought, but in customer-facing roles, a crisp integration guide is the product. Learn to kill cognitive load, structure for skimmers, and instrument your docs like production code.
9 min read
Forward Deployed
Debugging in the Customer's Environment Without Direct Access: The FDE Playbook
A concrete playbook for Forward Deployed Engineers debugging production issues in air-gapped or restricted customer environments. Covers telemetry, proxy tooling, and how to structure your resume to prove you can fix code you can't touch.
7 min read
Forward Deployed
FDE Career Pivot: How Backend & Frontend Engineers Break Into Forward Deployed AI Roles
Transitioning from backend or frontend into an AI Forward Deployed Engineer role isn't about a PhD. It's about mastering a new T-shaped skillset: chaining APIs, prompt engineering, and ruthless prototyping. Here's the concrete playbook.
8 min read
Forward Deployed
FDE Playbook: From Customer Chaos to Shipped Prototype in 5 Days
A concrete playbook for Forward Deployed Engineers: how to triage a messy enterprise problem, scope a zero-to-one prototype, and ship working code in a single week. Real tools, decisions, and comp context.
11 min read
Forward Deployed
Solutions Engineer vs Software Engineer: The Trust-Building Playbook
Stop coding in a silo. Master the trust-driven workflow that separates solutions engineers from software engineers. Real tactics for alignment, demo psychology, and comp.
7 min read
Forward Deployed
What a Forward Deployed Engineer Actually Ships in a 60-Hour Week
A concrete, engineer-to-engineer breakdown of what a Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) ships during a 60-hour sprint in an AI startup. We cover real code, customer firefights, and architecture decisions—no hype.
10 min read
Forward Deployed
How Palantir-Style FDEs Embed with Customers: The Immersion Playbook
A concrete playbook for Forward Deployed Engineers on customer immersion: how to embed, map the power hierarchy, build trust, and ship code that sticks—not just demos that impress.
6 min read
Forward Deployed
After the Ink Dries: How FDEs Partner with Product and Core Engineering Post-Sale
The deal is closed, but the real work begins. A tactical playbook for Forward Deployed Engineers on navigating the post-sale handoff, driving product feedback loops, and preventing the 'valley of death' between Sales and Core Engineering.
9 min read
Forward Deployed
What a Forward Deployed Engineer Ships in a 60-Hour Week at an AI Startup
A concrete, hour-by-hour dissection of an FDE's week: debugging customer RAG pipelines, shipping POC features, and navigating the messy reality between sales promises and production code.
11 min read
Forward Deployed
FDE Compensation Reality: Salary Bands, Equity, and Negotiation Tactics
Real FDE compensation data: salary bands by stage, equity structures, and concrete negotiation tactics. Learn how to map your value to the right leverage points.
10 min read
AI News
Inkling Open-Weights: What a New Contender Means for the Model Landscape
Thinking Machines just dropped Inkling, an open-weights model built for reasoning. We cut through the noise to show engineers what actually changed, how to run it locally, and where it fits in your stack.
10 min read
AI News
Inside Grok Build: Why xAI Open-Sourcing Its Agent Toolkit Matters
xAI just open-sourced Grok Build, the internal orchestrator behind their agent workflows. Here's the engineering breakdown: what it is, why it flips the script on agent design, and how to run it locally today.
9 min read
AI News
The Memory Heist: How Indirect Prompt Injection Extracts Claude's Persistent Context
A walkthrough of indirect prompt injection against Claude's persistent memory, why it's a critical vector for forward-deployed engineers, and how to exploit and mitigate it in production LLM pipelines.
12 min read
AI News
Running a 26B LLM on a 13-Year-Old CPU: The Inference Optimization Stack
How Neomind Labs coaxed 5 tokens/sec from Gemma 4 26B on an ancient Xeon with no GPU. We break down the quantization, caching, and kernel stack that makes it possible—and what FDEs should steal from it.
12 min read
AI News
Why DSLs Are the Missing Link for Production-Grade LLM Applications
LLMs are probabilistic, but production systems demand determinism. Learn how Domain-Specific Languages bridge the gap, turning unreliable natural language into structured, verifiable outputs that forward-deployed engineers can actually ship.
8 min read
Build Guides
Build a Study Flashcard Generator That Turns Lecture Notes into Anki Decks with Groq's Free LLM
Script a free Python tool that chunks lecture PDFs or Markdown notes and uses Groq's free Llama-3.1-70B to generate high-signal question-answer pairs in Anki CSV format, ready for import.
11 min read
Build Guides
Build a Multi-Agent Research Assistant with Gemini Flash Free Tier
Build a planner-searcher-writer agent system using Google Gemini Flash's free tier. Decompose topics, fetch live web results via SerpAPI, and synthesize structured briefs with Python and LangChain.
11 min read
Guides
Palantir FDE Exit Opportunities: Where Forward Deployed Engineers Go Next
A tactical guide to Palantir FDE exit opportunities. Career paths, salary comps, and how to translate your deployment scars into high-leverage startup, big tech, or founder roles.
8 min read
Guides
How to Get a Job as an AI Engineer: The Skills That Actually Matter
Stop chasing hype. Learn the exact engineering skills, system design patterns, and portfolio projects that bypass HR filters and get you hired as an AI Engineer in 2025.
9 min read
Guides
What Does a Forward Deployed Engineer Mean? Role, Scope & Reality
A forward deployed engineer embeds with customers to ship high-impact solutions under fire. Learn the real job scope, FDE vs SWE, salary data, and how AI redefines the role.
9 min read
Guides
Palantir FDE Interview: Decomposition, Debugging & Prep Guide
Master the Palantir Forward Deployed Engineer interview loop. Tactical prep for decomposition, debugging, and system design with real patterns and sample questions.
11 min read
Guides
How to Become an Army Engineer: Qualifications, Training & Career Transition
A practical, no-fluff guide on how to become an army engineer. Covers officer vs. enlisted paths, MOS qualifications, ASVAB scores, training pipelines, and transitioning to civilian engineering roles.
9 min read
Guides
Forward Deployed Engineer Hong Kong: Roles, Salaries & Top Hiring Companies
Explore Forward Deployed Engineer roles in Hong Kong: salary benchmarks, key hiring companies, required skills, and how to break into this high-impact AI/tech career.
9 min read
Guides
Databricks AI SDE Interview: Coding, System Design & ML Rounds
Inside the Databricks AI SDE interview loop: coding patterns, system design for lakehouse architecture, and ML engineering rounds. Prep tactics and real questions.
9 min read
1,162 articles and counting