How to ride the FDE wave into 2027
Forward Deployed Engineering spent most of its life as a slightly strange corner of the technology industry. Palantir had FDEs. A few companies borrowed the model. Most engineers could go through an entire career without ever needing to know what the acronym meant. That changed quickly in 2026. Anthropic has committed $100 million to training […]
Everyone wants an FDE. Almost nobody agrees on where to find one.
Forward Deployed Engineers have become one of the more awkward hiring problems in AI. The demand is real enough. Research shared with TechCrunch by executive search firm Christian & Timbers found that the share of companies planning to hire FDEs had risen from roughly 5–10% at the start of this year to 70% by the […]
The better the models get, the more FDEs we seem to need
Earlier this month, Anthropic announced that it is committing $100 million to train 10,000 Frontier Deployed Engineers by the end of 2027. The programme is more substantial than the usual enterprise certification exercise. Engineers are nominated by their organisations, work through a simulated deployment, sit a practical assessment, then spend twelve weeks leading a real […]
Is FDE a Bubble?
By Anjor Kanekar Read the full article on Anjor’s website here. When I wrote If LEGO Had Forward Deployed Engineers, I opened by saying the role was having a moment. That was an understatement. Since then the title has spread everywhere — every AI startup seems to be hiring FDEs, investors ask founders about their […]
If LEGO Had Forward Deployed Engineers
By Anjor Kanekar Read the full piece on Anjor’s website here. Forward Deployed Engineer is having a moment. Anthropic and OpenAI are pouring billions into the model. Lots of articles getting written about it. Founders are spinning up “FDE” titles before they’ve really worked out what the role does. And in nearly every conversation I […]
Interviewing in the age of AI
By Anjor Kanekar. Read the full piece on Anjor’s website here. Interviews have always been a bad proxy. You get maybe an hour with someone and you’re supposed to figure out whether they’ll be effective in a role that plays out over months and years. You can’t replicate real working conditions—the codebase they’d actually work […]