The Forward Engineer Community
Two years ago, I stumbled into what’s now the “hottest job in startups.” It wasn’t at the time. In fact, at the time, I didn’t even really know what I was signing up for.
I joined as a founding Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) at a dev-tool startup. The FDE role is pretty ambiguous and ambitious in nature (and I’m still trying to define it better), but, and I’ll say that as honestly as possible: I’ve never found anything that fits me better.
I am a software engineer by background but extroverted by nature. I like talking to people. I like problem-solving. I like following my curiosity. I like dealing with ambiguity. I like selling. I like being responsible for outcomes (for better or worse).
I believe there are more people like me. People who have both technical and business skills, who have been splitting themselves across roles that only wanted half of them. But as an FDE, they can bring their full selves to work.
Even though it was such a perfect fit for me, the transition to FDE was rough. I stepped on a lot of toes. My attempt to brute force it by reading up on product, engineering, and sales largely failed. I realized, slowly and by doing, that to become an effective FDE I need to hone a specific skillset — intentionally and methodically. It’s a craft.
But when I looked around I couldn’t find resources where I could see what the best FDEs were doing. There’s no YCombinator for FDEs. There’s no Lenny Rachitsky for FDEs. There’s no…really anything? that can help you become a world-class FDE.
At the same time, I see more and more companies wanting (and struggling!) to hire FDEs. The title is getting thrown around all over Twitter and LInkedIn but it often feels like few are actually building and scaling the FDE function effectively.
I don’t think this is a fad or hype rebranding of the consultant role. I’m betting that forward-deployed engineering is a critical long-term shift in the tech ecosystem, only accelerated by LLMs. As tooling has progressed, engineers can own more of the problem. Backend → full-stack → product engineer → FDE. And now that the bottleneck to building is no longer coding but clarity about what to build next, a great way to gain clarity is to tighten the feedback loops by putting the builder next to a customer. When you close the gap between builder and customer you build better software, much faster.
All of those reasons are why I’m launching the Forward Engineer,” a community and newsletter for FDEs to:
Interview top FDEs and learn best practices
Meet like-minded people who already are or are looking to become FDEs
Discover the tools and tactics FDEs are using in a fast changing environment
Understand what makes a high performing FDE team culture
Dissect great FDE hiring process
This is a young craft and I’m on a journey to figure it out. I’m doing this in true forward engineering fashion: building things, talking to people, smashing into reality, and tightening feedback loops. I’d love to have you along for the ride.
If you are hiring FDEs, please send me an email: hi@theforwardengineer.com. I would love to connect you to really talented people.