Shadow a Forward Deployed Engineer

Hosted by Aki Wijesundara, PhD and Manu Jayawardana

Mon, Jan 18, 2027

2:00 PM UTC (30 minutes)

Virtual (Zoom)

Free to join

Invite your network

Go deeper with a course

Agentic AI Engineering Bootcamp and Certificate: Early Bird Discounted
Dr. Aki Wijesundara and Manu Jayawardana
View syllabus

What you'll learn

See how an FDE splits a real day

Walk through an actual calendar and where the hours genuinely go

Handle a scope change raised on a call

See how a request gets absorbed or pushed back without damaging trust.

Judge whether the pattern suits you

Decide if this working style fits before you spend months preparing.

Why this topic matters

Job descriptions describe the skills and never the day. Client calls, debugging someoneelse's data, negotiating scope in a meeting you did not plan to negotiate in, and writingcode somewhere in between. Seeing a real day hour by hour tells you more about fit thanany list of requirements.

You'll learn from

Aki Wijesundara, PhD

AI Advisor | Educator | Google AI Accelerator Alum

Aki Wijesundara is an AI leader with a PhD in Machine Learning and extensive experience mentoring startups at Google’s AI Accelerator. With a career spanning both research and applied AI, Aki has taught 5,000+ students worldwide how to design and deploy production-ready AI systems.

He has worked across cutting-edge areas of applied AI, from LangChain and RAG pipelines to observability and large-scale deployment. As a researcher and educator, Aki bridges the gap between theory and practice, making complex systems approachable and actionable for engineers, founders, and product leaders.

Aki is also a frequent speaker and advisor to organizations adopting AI, helping them transition from experimentation to production at scale.

Manu Jayawardana

AI Founder | CCEO at TAI Labs | Co-Founder of Snapdrum

Manu Jayawardana is a serial entrepreneur with multiple AI startup successes.

He is also the Co-Founder of Snapdrum, an AI consultancy helping companies integrate and automate their businesses using AI. Through Snapdrum, Manu has worked with top startups and enterprises across the U.S., Europe, and Asia, advising on automation, product development, and AI strategy.

Currently, Manu is the Co-Founder & CEO of Krybe, an AI voice agent startup in London transforming how businesses automate customer interactions. His experience spans fundraising, scaling products, and leading teams to deliver production-grade AI solutions adopted globally.

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