Descriptions:
Forward deployed engineer is the hottest job in AI right now, and the pay bands do not agree with each other. Here is what the job actually is, which third of the skill set you already have, and how to prove the rest.
Grab my guide to get FDE Interview ready in 30 days:
https://natesnewsletter.substack.com/p/become-forward-deployed-engineer?r=1z4sm5&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
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What’s really happening inside the forward deployed engineer boom?
The common story is that the labs are automating engineering away, but the real question is why every one of them is hiring humans as fast as it can to sit inside your company and make the model work.
In this video, I share the inside scoop on what a forward deployed engineer actually does and how to become one:
– Why DXC and Anthropic promised tens of thousands and have trained 86
– How to find the leverage point inside a real workflow
– What the three parts of the FDE job actually require
– Where your industry knowledge beats a coding bootcamp
Forward deployed engineering pays what it pays because the last mile of AI is still human work, and the people who can walk that mile are rarer than the job postings suggest.
Chapters:
00:00 The labs are hiring humans as fast as they can
01:23 Maya and the claims intake problem
04:17 Finding the leverage point
07:11 Why enterprise AI deployments hit the same wall
09:07 The three parts of the job and which one you have
12:53 Industry knowledge and the Claude Code study
13:36 Technical delivery and reading the job description
16:09 Evals are technical and have nothing to do with code
17:30 Deployment ownership
19:48 The 30-day plan
23:41 The FDE Skill Builder
24:32 Market size and not waiting for a title
Listen to this video as a podcast.
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0gkFdjd1wptEKJKLu9LbZ4
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ai-news-strategy-daily-with-nate-b-jones/id1877109372
