FDE Builder Mode

Tue Oct 27·4:00 PM UTC

The Frontier of Retrieval Engineering in Enterprise Systems

For Forward Deployed Engineers, an AI agent is only as useful as the context it can retrieve. When deploying AI into real customer workflows, basic keyword search (BM25), semantic search, or even hybrid search may fall short of what the task demands. Strong retrieval engineering means understanding the customer’s data, tuning search to their domain, and measuring whether the results help users and agents get the job done.

You'll learn from

Hamza Farooq

Founder | Ex-Google & Walmart Labs |Adjunct UCLA & UMN, SCU | Venture Partner

Trey Grainger

Author, "AI-Powered Search" and Founder @ Searchkernel

Fri Oct 30·3:30 PM UTC

Spec Engineering for FDEs: Blueprint for Zero-Shot Delivery

Feeding messy asks and customer data directly into a "vibe-coding genie" is a sure shot way to sloppy outcomes for your clients. FDEs don't build in a clean sandbox. You operate inside unique enterprise environments filled with vague requests and deadlines. Spec Engineering acts as the compiler between client ambiguity and agent execution. By building via structured Spec Kits, you start with deterministic blueprints that AI agents execute on.

You'll learn from

Hamza Farooq

Founder | Ex-Google & Walmart Labs |Adjunct UCLA & UMN, SCU | Venture Partner

Gayathri Keerthana

AI Consultant, ex-Amazon Sr PM (ML), 3x Founder

Sun Nov 1·4:30 PM UTC

Pilot to Production: What Happens When You Scale Agents

Serving one request tells you whether the application works. Serving many requests at once tells you whether it can support a customer’s workload. A response that takes two seconds during a demo may take ten when several users arrive together. The customer experiences the combined delay. As a forward-deployed engineer (FDE), you need to connect those behaviors to how the customer will use the application.

You'll learn from

Hamza Farooq

Founder | Ex-Google & Walmart Labs |Adjunct UCLA & UMN, SCU | Venture Partner

Abi Aryan

AI Infrastructure Engineer, Stealth

Wed Nov 4·4:30 PM UTC

Observability and Evals for Enterprise AI Systems

AI-native teams now ship 3–5x faster — but velocity without architectural literacy is how technical debt paralyzes a roadmap six months later. Claude Code has collapsed the time from idea to running code, not the complexity underneath it. This session gives you the full-stack mental model to catch the problem before you own it in Q3.

You'll learn from

Hamza Farooq

Founder | Ex-Google & Walmart Labs |Adjunct UCLA & UMN, SCU | Venture Partner

Aishwarya Ashok

AI Product Builder | Podcaster, The Founder’s Foyer | Startup Advisor