What a Forward Deployed Engineer actually does
A Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) sits with a client, finds the workflow that is costing them time or money, and ships an AI system that fixes it inside their stack, with their data, under their constraints. Then they hand it over in a state the client's team can run.
That means the job is half engineering and half judgment:
- Discovery. What is the real problem? Who owns it? What does "working" mean to them?
- Architecture. Which parts need an LLM, which need plain code, and how do the pieces talk to each other?
- Building fast. A proof of concept in days, not quarters, usually with an agentic coding partner like Claude Code.
- Earning trust. Evals, guardrails, human approval gates, observability. Nobody puts an agent into production on vibes.
It's a cycle, not a hand-off
The four parts don't happen once, in order. You learn something while building that sends you back to the client with a better question. An eval fails and you change the architecture. The FDE's job is to keep that loop short: days between "here's what we think you need" and "here's a version you can try".
What Module 0 covers in the bootcamp
The live module goes beyond the engineering: leading without authority, communicating with a client's team, and landing the role. The topics here give you the ground to stand on first. This one is the job itself. 0.2 sets up the workbench you'll build on all course, and 0.3 opens up the model at the centre of everything you'll ship.