Workshop

Storytelling for Forward Deployed Engineers FDE

Priyanka Vergadia

Top 1% AI Expert, Ex-@Google, Microsoft

The #1 FDE Skill Isn't AI or Coding. It's Storytelling!

I've built and hired FDE teams, DevRel and Solutions Engineers for 10+ Years. This workshop teaches what hiring managers look for beyond coding!

As a Software Engineer or AI Engineer, you can build agentic workflows and ship AI apps in days. That's not what makes a good FDE.

What kills FDE careers early: a CTO wants faster deployments, you jump to CI/CD tooling. The engineering team is uncomfortable you're there, you don't notice. Someone hands you a pre-scoped project, you build without asking if it's the right problem.

FDE roles are everywhere: Google, OpenAI, Anthropic are all building this function. But engineers getting those offers aren't winning on technical chops. They ask questions, keep going past the first answer, figure out who does the work, who feels threatened, what's politically doable. Not just tech. People. Org charts. They leave with scoped projects the customer actually wants built.

In this workshop you will:

  • Run real discovery conversations with enterprise customers

  • Navigate stakeholders who don't all agree and some who don't want you there

  • Turn a business goal into a scoped project you can deliver

AI and code got you this far. This gets you to FDE.

What you’ll learn

Go from engineer to FDE with the SCOPE Method: uncover problems, manage politics, define outcomes, influence without authority.

  • Study the customer's business, industry, and public materials before you ever speak to them

  • Push for the executive-level conversation anything below gives you a pre-filtered problem

  • Connect to business pain (revenue, cost, time) not pre-scoped deliverables

  • Walk the customer's full process end to end (tools, teams, bottlenecks) through their stated goal

  • Turn a vague ask like "ship faster" into a specific, defensible project with measurable outcomes

  • Build the instinct: business outcome first, technical solution second

  • Read the room: spot the skeptical CTO, threatened engineer, VP with the impossible timeline

  • Hold different conversations with IT, finance, and leadership on the same project in one week

  • Earn trust through curiosity ask questions instead of performing expertise

  • Define measurable outcomes that map directly to the customer's business goals

  • Sequence your toolbox: show demos, prior work, and art-of-the-possible only after context is earned

  • Hand off cleanly with research, projects, and outcomes already locked ready for the next discipline

Workshop agenda

  • What nobody teaches engineers about becoming an FDE (30 mins))

    Why coding and AI skills alone won't get you there. The communication gap, the mindset shift, and why the SCOPE Method exists.

  • The SCOPE Method: 5-step FDE discovery framework (1 hour)

    Walk through Study, Connect, Observe, People, Execute how each step builds on the last, and where most engineers skip ahead and fail.

  • Deep-dive into each SCOPE step with real enterprise examples (2 hours)

    Live walkthroughs: desk research, pushing for the exec meeting, double-clicking a CTO's vague ask, reading stakeholder dynamics, scoping outcomes.

  • SCOPE Workout: run a full discovery on a real scenario (2-3 hours)

    You get a customer brief. You run the full SCOPE Method research, exec conversation, double-click, stakeholder map, scoped project. No slides. Just reps.

  • Optional bonus Q&A bring your real FDE challenges (1 hour)

    Open session to workshop your actual situations: difficult stakeholders, scoping problems, career transition questions. Top questions answered live

Learn directly from Priyanka

Priyanka Vergadia

Priyanka Vergadia

Contact

AI & Cloud leader @Microsoft @Google | Visual Storyteller | TED Speaker

Previously at & Trusted By:
Google
Microsoft
The Wharton School
Intel
TED
See all products from Priyanka

Who this workshop is for

  • Software Engineers: You ship production systems but have never run customer discovery or scoped a project from a vague exec ask.

  • Solutions Architects Consultants: You have stakeholder skills but need the framework to own outcomes and shape projects, not just sell them.

  • Technical Product Managers: You define what gets built but have never embedded with a customer's engineering team to ship it yourself.

What's included

Priyanka Vergadia

Live sessions

Learn directly from Priyanka Vergadia in a real-time, interactive format.

Lifetime access

Go back to course content and recordings whenever you need to.

Community of peers

Stay accountable and share insights with like-minded professionals.

Certificate of completion

Share your new skills with your employer or on LinkedIn.

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Free resources

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$1,100

USD

Sep 27—Sep 28
·

1–8pm EDT

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