Forward Deployed Engineers: The High-Value Role Every AI Company Is Hiring For

We have recently seen a surge in enquiries asking about “Forward Deployed Engineers” or “FDEs”.

Is this a fancy new AI role?

You might have seen this job title popping up in conversations and online like in a recent Sifted post.

As one CTO put it: “Isn’t it just a developer with good communication skills you can send to customers?”

At its core, this is a hands-on engineer with strong communication skills, working directly with customers post-sale. Think solution sales, implementation, onboarding, problem-solving, but done on site, in real time, with real impact.

Worth mentioning that Palantir Technologies created this title years ago for military customers. Yes, onsite in Iraq and Afghanistan, not exactly built for coffee in Shoreditch coworking offices.

This latest trend follows OpenAI and Anthropic building dedicated FDE teams, which in turn has triggered copy hiring across the AI ecosystem.

💡 Strip the branding away and this looks very familiar to Post-Sales Engineers, Solution Engineers, Front-Office Trading Developers, Professional Services Engineers.

All of these roles pay a premium. Why?

Because engineers who can code and work onsite with paying customers are rare. Good luck competing with OpenAI but there certainly are lots of great Software Developers to choose from with strong coms and commercial minded that could put the FDE hat on and work with customers.

Are you a Founder, Operator, or Investor at a VC/PE-backed company?

If you’re thinking about driving revenue, replacing underperformers, launching a new market, then we should talk.

👉 Most suitable for candidates interested in working for companies with 20 to 500 headcount, VC-backed Series A, B, C scale-ups, challenger brands and Private Equity.