What’s the Deal With the Forward Deployed Engineering Roles? 

When Palantir embedded engineers inside military command centres, assigning them to integrate and provide support for the company’s data analytics platforms into classified workflows and mission-critical operations, it appeared like an expensive anomaly, a niche approach serving the most secretive customers on the planet.  But this model has now become the blueprint for AI companies to win enterprise deals worth millions. From OpenAI to Salesforce and MongoDB, companies are hiring Forward Deployed Engineers (FDEs), a role created initially by Palantir.  Some are even calling this the ‘hottest job’ in the generative AI space. So what is the deal?  Simply put, FDEs are software engineers who embed themselves directly with customers to implement, customise, and de