Forward Deployed Engineer

This wraps our Forward Deployed Shift Series.

Today, a three-question test to tell a real FDE role from an SE job with a fashionable title.

Okay, before the test, are they actually different jobs? Because my gut says no.

Same person, nicer hoodie.

Timing first.

SEs work before the signature.

FDEs mostly after.

Second, output.

And so we're going to get a little technical for a moment, but I want you to explain this because I think it's important.

So you've described the approach as anti-FDE, forward deployed engineers, which is kind of the opposite, right? Of how most AI companies right now are deploying code and building.

Can you talk about that FDE, anti-FDE and like, what is that? What does that mean? And why is it important for town?

Yeah.

So I think a lot of The way a lot of larger companies, especially, incorporate AI, which is the right model for them, is they will find one of the... like big labs or a big consulting firm that goes and uses AI to sort of automate internal processes and things that are happening internally.

relatively.

Yeah, I mean, we're seeing that with, you know, the whole, I mean, it's kind of side note, but with the whole FDE trend that we're seeing, everyone's, you know, this is becoming the hottest job in AI as a forward deployed engineer because there's so few people that actually, you know, know enough about business on the one side and then how to, you know, work with AI tools on the other in order to build anything that's bespoke for enterprises or governments.

Exactly.

You know, a lot of our listeners are founders.

Theek hai, theek hai.

Mujhe lagta hai Pakistan-- within Pakistan ke andar bahut sari opportunity hai ke aap choti-choti products बनाएं, आप local market को digitize करें, आप बहुत सारी चीजें करें। लेकिन जब मैं global market की बात कर रहा हूँ, do you think it is smarter for people to move towards product development या उनको अपने आप को rescale करके forward deployed engineering services की तरफ जाना चाहिए जिसमें शायद वो AI led development and problem solving and outcome focused work कर सकें rather than you know जो अभी वेबसाइटें बना रहे थे या जो भी कर रहे थे but still है वो services ही।

Correct.

अच्छा मुज़म्मिल भाई इसमें मैं दो angles से इसको देखूंगा। I can talk from the company perspective as well.

FDE is the hottest role in tech right now.

What does the role look like at Laura Keats specifically?

So I run discovery, scoping, demos.

think all

SEs

are going to become FDEs.

Fundamentally though, a lot of AEs are doing more hands-on demos.

As an SE, you need to spend a lot more time in understanding and building.

He was at Salesforce before he left.

He's come back now to help the company build this FDE capability.

I think our conversation is going to be great today.

So let's get this insight engine humming.

But I would say that we are builders first, advisors second, right? So our team builds, we code, we deploy, we test, and eventually we drive agenda adoption to ultimately drive real business outcomes, right? So At Salesforce, the way we think about our agent force forward to blood engineering team is that this is a customer facing, customer embedded engineering role.

The key skills are really around core development, AI expertise.

At the same time, we want our FDEs to have a product management lens.

And I'll talk about that in more detail.

So we're going to chat about this research a little bit as well.

And finally, in From the Forge, powered by CoreWeave, we're going to talk about the global AI network that we expanded in the Middle East, but also we're going to talk about FDE's four deployed engineers from CoreWeave that are deployed in F1 and are doing cool things with machine learning and AI.

I think that this is mostly what we have.

Folks, if you have folks on the show, Wolfram and Aniston, anything else big from this week that we should mention and we should chat about?

Welcome.

I've been trying to get the three of you to talk about some of the stuff that we're doing for a while.

And for folks who are tuning in, we're going to maybe mention the concept of FDE at first, Forward Deployed Engineer.

How about, maybe Morgan, how about you start and tell us what the hell is forward deployed engineering and why it's interesting? Get the mic a little closer to yourself.