I've Always Been a Forward Deployed Engineer

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I have been working at a startup since 2024 and it has been almost two years now.

In that time, I have never said no to a client meeting. I have never said that is not my responsibility. I have never had a conflict with the product team over who owns what. I just showed up, figured it out, and got it done.

Looking back, I think that says something.

Thriving in Diverse Settings

One thing I noticed about myself early on is that I actually enjoy working in different environments. I do not need a perfectly defined project scope or a clear lane to stay in. I am comfortable sitting across from a client, understanding what they are trying to solve, and then going back and building it.

That kind of flexibility, moving between technical work, customer conversations, and everything in between, is not something that comes naturally to everyone. But for me, it has always felt normal.

What AI Changed

With the rise of AI, something shifted across the industry. Everyone started building apps. Everyone started deploying.

Writing code became less of a differentiator. You could spin up a working prototype in a weekend. The bottleneck was no longer the code itself. It was understanding the customer well enough to build the right thing, and then making sure it actually worked in their environment.

The coder became less used, not useless.

The real value moved toward the person who could sit with a customer, understand their world, and make the software work for them, not just in theory but in production.

I Have Always Been an FDE

At Peninsular Research Operation, I was never just writing code in isolation. I was in client discussions. I was understanding business requirements. I was taking ownership of outcomes, not just outputs.

I did not have the title. I did not even know the term at the time. But looking at what a Forward Deployed Engineer actually does, embedding with customers, building trust, shipping production solutions that solve real problems, that is exactly what I have been doing.

And I think the heart of the FDE role is this: developing trust and completing the product.

Not just delivering a feature. Delivering something the customer can actually use and rely on.

A Role Worth Aspiring To

The more I reflect on the last two years, the more I realize that what I have been doing is not just engineering. It is customer-facing engineering with full ownership.

I want to continue growing in that direction. I want to deepen the skills that sit at the intersection of technical depth and customer understanding. And I want to be the kind of engineer that a company trusts to walk into a complex customer environment and make things work.

If you want to read more about what the Forward Deployed Engineer role looks like across the industry, I wrote a more detailed piece on Medium covering the skills, comparisons with SDE and Solutions Architect roles, and why this role is becoming important now:

Becoming a Forward Deployed Engineer: From SDE to FDE

I am still on this path. But I am more certain than ever that it is the right one.