Essay 01
The FDE Is the Product Builder Wearing a Visitor Badge
OpenAI raised $4 billion for a deployment company. Anthropic launched a $1.5 billion one. The role they hire for is the Product Builder, from the services side.
The Product OS · the forward deployed engineering seat
Make AI work in the real world.
The work between a powerful demo and an outcome a customer can trust, and the loop that turns every deployment into product.
What this seat owns
The customer edge: deployments that land, and field signal back into the product in hours, not quarters.
When building is cheap, the outcome is decided by the loop from customer to adoption. One loop needs one owner. The CPO owns the whole product outcome, and product, design, product marketing, and forward deployed engineering run it together. See the whole OS.
- 01 · leadsCustomerField signal from deployments, support, and usage, read daily.
- 02SpecThe problem, the behavior, and the eval that says it works.
- 03BuildAgents and Product Builders take the spec to working software.
- 04StoryPositioning and proof that buyers, sellers, and AI assistants read.
- 05 · leadsAdoptionThe outcome number moves, or the loop runs again.
Start here
The argument, in 4 essays.
Written for forward deployed engineers. Read them in order, or start with the question on your mind.
Essay 02
2,000 of 17,000: The FDE Shortage Is a Product Problem
Only 2,000 of 17,000 US forward deployed engineers can deliver real ROI, and demand is up 2,100%. The gap is not talent. It is what the product lets an FDE do.
Essay 03
Absorb Pain, Excrete Product: The FDE Handback
Palantir made Fujitsu a Global FDE Partner. When someone else does the deploying, the handback has to be a written packet with a date, and a decision back.
Essay 04
NICE Moved Its FDEs Into Go-to-Market. The FDE Org Belongs Under the CPO.
Three earnings calls named FDE teams this week with only sales and delivery numbers. The field's output is a product decision. Put the org under the CPO.
The handbook
7 chapters for this seat.
How to do the work, chapter by chapter. Every seat starts from the same core.
- Core · Why This Exists
- Core · The AI Product Operating Model
- Core · Engineering Builds the Substrate, Not Features
- Core · The Eval Is The Spec
- Core · Kill the Roadmap
- Core · The Impact Loop
- 01The Forward Deployed Engineer Is a Product Builder in DisguisePalantir invented the FDE because software shipped without its engineer does not get adopted. It is the Product Builder, from the services side.7 min read
- 02FDE vs Sales Engineer: The Job Starts Where the Contract Is SignedA sales engineer's job ends when the customer says yes. An FDE's job begins there. Confusing the two is how companies get expensive demos and no adoption.7 min read
- 03What Has to Change in the Product Before FDEs Can WorkSending engineers into customers without changing the product turns them into a consulting firm. Five things the product must expose before the first FDE lands.8 min read
- 04The Deployment-to-Product Loop: How FDE Work Becomes RoadmapPalantir's ingestion, visualization, and app builder all started as one FDE's hack for one customer. The loop that generalized them is why the model made money.7 min read
- 05Building the FDE Team: Reporting Line, Bar, Pairing, and CompFDEs who report to sales become sales engineers within two quarters. Reporting line, hiring bar, pairing, and comp decide whether the team lasts a year.7 min read
- 06FDE Economics: Margins, Outcome Pricing, and When to StopForward deployment costs like services and has to earn like software. The math works only if the loop closes and the pricing puts revenue behind the result.7 min read
- 07Becoming an FDE: The Transition From PM, Engineer, or SEThree doors lead into the FDE role. Each one arrives with two of the three things the job needs and is missing the third. A 90-day plan for each.7 min read
The running series · New parts every Wednesday, part of The Product OS
The FDE Transition
Part 15
NICE Moved Its FDEs Into Go-to-Market. The FDE Org Belongs Under the CPO.
Three earnings calls named FDE teams this week with only sales and delivery numbers. The field's output is a product decision. Put the org under the CPO.
Part 14
Palantir Can't Satiate Demand: What Breaks in the FDE Org at 100
Palantir says it 'cannot satiate demand' and must re-resource. Five things break between the tenth FDE and the hundredth, and what the inventor did instead.
Part 13
A Model Alone Is Not an Agent: What the Tooling Changed for the FDE Seat
Anthropic's S-1 defines forward-deployed engineers on page one and sells the harness they used to write. What that moves in the FDE seat, and what it doesn't.
Part 12
The FDE Writes the Eval: Almost Right Has a Number
Aneel Bhusri: 'almost right isn't good enough.' Colin Jarvis: FDEs built the evals. The eval is the deployment artifact, and the FDE writes it.
- Should forward deployed engineers report to the CPO?
- What breaks when a forward deployed engineering team scales?
- What did agent harnesses change for forward deployed engineers?
- Who writes the eval in a forward deployed engineering deployment?
- When should a company not hire forward deployed engineers?
- What should an enterprise put in a forward deployed engineering contract?
Part of The Product OS
One loop. Five seats.
This seat runs one part of the loop from customer to adoption, under the CPO. See how the other seats connect to it.
See the whole Product OS