The FDE Handbook

Most of what is written about forward deployed engineering is recruiting copy. The actual craft gets passed around verbally between people who have done it, and almost never written down.

This is the attempt to write it down. Ten pages, no funnel, no upsell ladder.

What is inside

• What the role actually is, and why owning the outcome is the only distinction that matters

• The five moves of a real deployment, in the order they happen

• How it differs from solutions engineering, architecture, consulting and product, in one table

• What it pays. Median advertised base of $216K across the 109 roles on my job board that publish a US range

• The four things you have to demonstrate to get hired, and the one that eliminates most strong engineers

• Seven questions people actually ask, answered without the recruiting gloss

Who it is for
Engineers moving into the role. Working FDEs who want language for what they already do. Founders and hiring managers standing up a deployment function for the first time and trying to work out what they are actually hiring for.

Who wrote it
I am the founding forward deployed engineer at Notion. Before that, Google and Bloomberg. I am writing the O'Reilly book on this role because when I started doing the work there was nothing to read.