Am I a Forward Deployed Engineer?
Maybe. Probably not. But you might be. Take the Quiz
Prior Context — Issue 02
I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting on my job lately.
Not in a crisis way. More in a “wait, does this role I’m doing have a name now?” kind of way.
It is impossible to not have stumbled across the term Forward Deployed Engineer and moment the title is having.
So let’s talk about it.
What an FDE actually is
The role was created at Palantir in the early 2010s, where they called these engineers “Deltas.” The description they used: responsibilities similar to a startup CTO — small teams, high-stakes projects, end-to-end execution.
The idea was simple. Enterprise customers have messy, complex, real-world environments that no product demo ever accounts for. So instead of handing them documentation and a support ticket queue, you embed an engineer directly inside their world. They write real code, solve real problems, and bring what they learn back to the product team.
The role is part technical architect, part primary coder, part customer translator — and the best ones can walk into a room full of executives who don’t understand technical jargon and make the whole thing make sense.
Sound familiar to anyone? (Sounds like some Solutions Architects I know)
Why this is having a moment
FDE job postings grew 1,165% year over year in 2025. Deepgram AI deployments are the reason. AI systems need extensive integration with company data, workflows, and security constraints to be useful — simply exposing an API isn’t enough for enterprise-scale deployments. Substack Companies need engineers who can live in that gap.
So the role exploded. And with it, the title.
Here’s the honest part
After analyzing a thousand FDE job postings, researchers found companies are using the title to describe three completely different jobs Deepgram — a true embedded builder, a sales engineer who got rebranded, and in some cases, a GTM role that probably shouldn’t be called FDE at all. ( I also had Claude do some research)
One analyst put it plainly: the term has a military ring to it, and if a company has significantly more FDEs than product engineers, they’re starting to look like a consultancy, not a product company.
Which is fine. Consulting is valuable work. But the title doing that much lifting is worth noticing.
Tech has always invented new names for configurations of existing work. Sometimes the new name captures something genuinely new. Sometimes it’s a hiring magnet dressed as a job description. Usually it’s somewhere in between.
Okay but the quiz you came for
Am I a Forward Deployed Engineer?
5 questions. Be honest with yourself.
1. Have you ever fixed a customer’s problem in a live environment while also mentally filing a product feedback ticket in your head?
2. Do you regularly translate between what a customer says they want and what they actually need — and ship accordingly?
3. Have you been in a meeting where you were simultaneously the most technical person and the one responsible for making it make sense to everyone else?
4. Does your work sit somewhere between “we built the product” and “we sold the product” — in the place where it actually has to work?
5. Has anyone ever described your role by listing three other roles?
If you answered yes to three or more: you might be a forward deployed engineer. Your company might just call it something else. Nomenclature has always interested me.
I am not a Forward Deployed Engineer, I’m a Ai Architect which is a type Solutions Architect. But I also do developer advocacy, so I may also be a developer advocate?Overall, role names are interesting and can look so different at different companies. Next I might tackle “what is a Solutions Architect” as that title can also be just as broad.
— Wanjiko, Prior Context