# FDE Interview Guide v1 **Subtitle:** How the loop actually works, and what the first 90 days punish **Brand:** FDE Field **Version:** v1 — 18 Aug 2026 **Price:** Free. Not a job guarantee. Not an AI course. Not a placement. **Bylines:** FDE Field. Operator unnamed. --- ## Read this first This v1 is built from **opened job descriptions only**. Freeze: **88 opened live reqs**, **30** marked first-pod (`first_pod=yes`), pulled 18 Aug 2026 from the FDE Field job DB (`jobs-db.sourced-95.csv`) and the skill map cut the same day. First-pod means the title says Founding, or the opened JD says first FDE / founding seat / one of the first / writing the playbook. Volume labs (OpenAI, Anthropic, Palantir) and other scaled FDE orgs marked `first_pod=no` are not first-pod. **Practitioner interviews are not in yet.** We have not sat with practicing FDEs or specialist recruiters for this draft. There are no contributor notes behind these pages. When those conversations land, we revise. Until then, every claim below is either (a) a phrase counted on the opened JDs, (b) a short quote copied from an opened job page, or (c) a working method labeled as ours, not as “what an FDE told us.” We do not invent interview stories. We do not invent a named-company loop. We do not add this 88 to any other census. If you already ship production software and have sat with a user, a buyer, or a messy stakeholder, this is for you. If you want to be taught Python, models, or prompting, it is not. --- ## 1. What the title actually means A forward-deployed engineer (FDE), also called a forward-deployed software engineer (FDSE), is a customer-facing software engineer who develops and deploys software inside a client company, often working alongside the client’s employees for a defined period. Wikipedia records the overlap with solutions architects, sales engineers, customer engineers, professional services engineers, systems integrators, and IT consultants, and that Palantir popularized the title. AWS, OpenAI, and Anthropic hire it too. [Wikipedia, *Forward Deployed Engineer*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forward_Deployed_Engineer), page as of 18 Aug 2026. That is the origin paragraph. Adjacent titles without “Forward Deployed” in the title were not added to this freeze (Google Cloud Customer Engineer and similar Pulse cards were skipped). The rest of this guide is what the opened JDs actually ask you to do. On this freeze, the JDs do not treat the seat as pre-sales, support, or back-office delivery. Two of them say so in those words (quoted in §8). They treat it as engineering, done in the customer’s house, under ambiguity, with stakeholders in the room. --- ## 2. Who is hiring on this freeze **Snapshot date:** 18 Aug 2026. **n = 88 opened reqs.** First-pod = **30 yes / 54 unknown / 4 no**. This is our opened set. It is not a market total. Do not add it to anyone else’s tracker. Must-have engineering phrases (document frequency, one count per req, from `SKILL-MAP.md`): | Phrase | Count / 88 | |---|---:| | integrations | 53 | | Python | 53 | | LLM | 49 | | AI agents | 40 | | TypeScript | 33 | | production deployments | 31 | | backend | 23 | | full-stack | 21 | | React | 19 | FDE-judgment phrases (same file, same rule): | Phrase | Count / 88 | |---|---:| | stakeholders | 49 | | ambiguity | 47 | | customer-facing | 46 | | implementation | 38 | | travel | 35 | | on-site | 31 | | playbook | 25 | | executive stakeholders | 24 | | scoping | 18 | | embedded with customers | 14 | | go-live | 6 | | workshops | 6 | | proof of concept | 4 | | first 90 days | 1 | “First 90 days” appears in **one** opened JD (Protege). We do not invent a 90-day syllabus from that one phrase. §7 is inferred from first-pod language, and labeled as such. Three patterns that keep showing up in the 30 first-pod rows: **Pattern A — first seat, no playbook.** Title or body says first / founding / writing the playbook. Tacto, Amari, Sphere, Cape, Airweave, CommodityAI, Warp, Mintlify. You are not joining a motion. You are standing one up. **Pattern B — geographic or org first.** The company already has FDEs somewhere else. This req is the first in a region or a new team. Applied Intuition (EMEA / Munich), Meticulous (first FDE in San Francisco), Cape (East Asia). You inherit a product, not a local playbook. **Pattern C — signed deal, nothing live.** The JD is an implementation seat with a founding flavor: turn a contract into a working system. comstruct, ZoomLogi, Dryft, Warp. Travel, on-site, scoping, go-live. If you are applying, pick a pattern before you pick a company. The interview will punish a generic SWE story that does not match the pattern. --- ## 3. How the loop runs **Sourced from:** 88 opened JDs, 18 Aug 2026. **Not sourced from:** contributor interviews, recruiter desks, or any employer’s published “our process” page. We did not find a numbered interview sequence on the freeze. Public JDs describe the **job** loop. They almost never describe the **interview** loop. Treat the job loop as the spec. If the interview is doing its job, it tests whether you can run that loop in someone else’s house. ### The job loop the JDs describe A composite of phrases, not a claimed process at any one firm: 1. **Land inside the account.** `customer-facing` (46), `embedded with customers` (14), `on-site` (31), `travel` (35). 2. **Name the real problem.** `ambiguity` (47), `scoping` (18), `customer discovery` (2), `workshops` (6). 3. **Build in their environment.** `integrations` (53), `implementation` (38), `production deployments` (31). Some seats are VPC / on-prem / bare metal (Mintlify, Reducto, Airweave, Postman). 4. **Move the stakeholder.** `stakeholders` (49), `executive stakeholders` (24). 5. **Get to live.** `go-live` (6), `proof of concept` (4). 6. **Leave something the next hire can use.** `playbook` (25) — and on first-pod reqs, you are the person writing it. That is the work. Writing production code is assumed (Python 53, TypeScript 33). Writing it *in their house*, under their constraints, with their people in the room, is the job. ### What an interview would have to test The outline we will revise against practitioner notes is: recruiter screen → technical → **customer scenario** → stakeholder → onsite / final. Those stage names are a working model, **not** a sourced sequence from OpenAI, Palantir, or anyone else on this freeze. Do not memorize them as “the loop.” Use them as a checklist against a specific JD: | If the JD says… | The loop has to test… | |---|---| | first FDE / writing the playbook | Can you invent a motion, and say what you will not promise | | ambiguity / scoping | Can you decompose a messy ask and hold a boundary | | customer-facing / embedded / on-site | Can you work in their environment, not yours | | stakeholders / executive stakeholders | Can you talk to a buyer without becoming pre-sales | | integrations / production deployments / go-live | Can you still ship, in their stack, to live | | travel | Can you actually go | A generic leetcode-plus-system-design loop misses the middle of that table. That is the gap this guide is for. ### What SWE prep does not cover From the opened language, not from a war story: - **Ambiguity is the default**, not a failure of the prompt. 47 of 88 say it. - **Decomposition and scoping** are named work (18), not a nice-to-have. - **Saying no** is implied wherever the JD pairs engineering with judgment (Poetic, Baseten — §8). The JDs do not give you a script for the no. You need one. - **Customer discovery** is rare as a phrase (2: Helios Intelligence Platforms, Aircall) and common as a job (embed, workshops, stakeholders). - **Production code in someone else’s house** — VPC, on-prem, their SSO, their data model, their pager. Reducto: “VPC to bare metal on-prem.” You do not get to pick the laptop image. If your prep is only “I can build an agent,” you are preparing the left column of the skill map and ignoring the right. --- ## 4. Judgment and the playbook On this freeze, `playbook` appears in **25 of 88** opened JDs. On first-pod seats it is not a binder you inherit. It is the thing you are hired to write. Tacto (first-pod): “You are one of the first FDEs at Tacto, so you are not slotting into a playbook, you are writing it.” https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/tacto/08260ebb-1abd-472c-8cb0-bf4d6503d460 Cape (first-pod): “FDE is a small, high-trust team. We're building this together. You will not be handed a playbook, you'll help write it.” https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/Cape/cc18572e-fa2f-46cb-94e9-fcac492314f8 Sphere (first-pod): “You won't just be executing a playbook, you'll be defining it as you go.” https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/sphere/7b5f39b0-6f3f-4bc4-9469-74ae9722d85a Airweave (first-pod): “Build the playbooks and tooling that define how Airweave lands in enterprise.” https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/airweave/jobs/OH2VNh6-founding-forward-deployed-engineer Judgment is named as the peer of engineering, not a soft skill bolted on: Poetic: “Agency, judgment, and customer understanding are equally if not more valuable in this role as strong software engineering ability.” https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/poetic/ca54fd9a-55eb-45ae-ba48-f666747a24e8 Baseten: “Navigate ambiguity and exercise good judgment on tradeoffs and tools needed to solve problems.” https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/baseten/84c1801c-1a65-49fb-aaaa-beeafd530e7e Minerva: “You thrive where there's no playbook...you set the goalposts with the customer and build to them.” https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/minerva/5c0c0f22-6908-4780-9c04-3d135b8aedb9 **What to practice.** Not a speech about being “comfortable with ambiguity.” A 12-minute out-loud pass on one account: 1. What is already true (their system of record, their owner, their constraint). 2. What you will build, in what order, and what “live” means. 3. What you will not build this month, and who you will say that to. 4. What becomes playbook (reusable) vs one-off (this account only). If you cannot do step 3, you are still in a feature-team story. First-pod JDs are hiring the person who writes the bar (Amari: “You will be the first FDE on the team, which means you set the bar.” — §8). --- ## 5. Customer and stakeholder `customer-facing` is in 46 of 88. `stakeholders` in 49. `executive stakeholders` in 24. `travel` in 35. `on-site` in 31. This is not a remote ticket queue with a nicer title. comstruct (first-pod): “you are the technical face of comstruct - the person who turns a signed deal into a live and working systems for the customer.” https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/comstruct/5aab69c9-273a-41dd-a7a6-ad7789a32533 Warp (first-pod): “As our Founding Forward Deployed Engineer, you'll be the first hire dedicated to making enterprise implementations successful.” https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/warp/jobs/5749183004 Amplitude: “This is not a traditional support or solutions role. Customer FDEs are engineers first.” https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/amplitude/jobs/8532156002 The opened JDs keep drawing the same line: not support, not solutions, not pre-sales, not back-office delivery. Engineer, in the account, until it is live. What that means in a room: - **The customer is a constraint, not an audience.** Their SSO, data model, change window, and who owns the pager are part of the design. - **The stakeholder is a decision, not a demo.** 24 reqs name executives. You need a version of the story that a CRO or a CISO can accept or kill in twenty minutes. - **Travel is a requirement, not a perk.** 35 reqs name it. If you cannot go, do not apply to those rows. - **Discovery is scarce as a word and common as a job.** Helios and Aircall name `customer discovery`. Everyone else names embed, workshops, scoping, implementation. **What they are listening for.** You have sat with a real person who could say no. You changed the work because they were real. You can describe what they did next. A slogan (“I like working with customers”) is empty against that. --- ## 6. Portfolio narrative One deployment. Four slides. That is enough. The freeze asks for production deployments (31), implementation (38), and stakeholders (49). It does not ask for a tool laundry list. **Slide 1 — The account and the constraint.** Who was in the room. What was already true. What you were not allowed to touch. No customer secrets, no logos you cannot show, no internal names. **Slide 2 — What you built vs what you reused.** Integrations and production code. Their environment, not a greenfield repo. If you cannot name the system of record, you do not have a deployment story. **Slide 3 — The tradeoff.** Judgment. The faster demo vs the thing that survives production. The scope you cut. The person you said no to. Baseten’s sentence is the test: tradeoffs and tools, under ambiguity. **Slide 4 — Live, owner, aftermath.** What “live” meant. Who ran it the following Monday. What broke. What you changed. What you would put in a playbook for the next hire. **Strip:** - Secrets, credentials, customer data, internal Slack. - Heroics (“I saved the account”). The JDs hire judgment, not a rescue montage. - Tool laundry lists (LangChain is in 4 of 88; Python is in 53). Name the constraint, not the stack. - “I want to work with users.” That is not a story. If you do not have a customer-facing deployment, use the closest thing: a stakeholder in the room, a constraint you did not pick, something that ran after you left. If you do not have that either, this title is the wrong target this quarter. --- ## 7. First 90 days The phrase `first 90 days` is in **1 of 88** opened JDs (Protege, Forward Deployed Engineer, New Verticals). We do not have a contributor diary of week 1. What follows is a working OS inferred from first-pod language on the freeze (write the playbook, set the bar, signed deal → live). Labeled as ours. When interviews land, this section gets rewritten. **Useful at a first-pod seat (30 on this freeze)** means the motion exists because you were there. Amari: you set the bar. Tacto / Cape / Sphere / Airweave: you write the playbook. Warp: you are the first hire dedicated to making enterprise implementations successful. Tread (opened JD, not in the 30): “You've helped define the FDE playbook that the next hire will use.” https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/tread/cac3ce33-3ee7-4736-9209-43a0220821f1 **Useful at a lab or scaled org** (`first_pod=no` on this freeze: OpenAI, Anthropic, Palantir, plus Cohere) means you can operate inside a motion that already has a name. You still embed. You still ship. You do not get to claim you invented the function. ### Week 1 - Get in the account. Map stakeholders by decision, not by title. - Find the system of record and the person who can say no. - Do not announce a playbook you have not run. - Write down what “live” would mean for *this* customer. If you cannot, you are still in discovery. ### Day 30 - One scoped implementation is in motion, or you have a written reason it is not. - Workshops only if they produce a decision (workshops are named in 6 of 88; they are not the job). - A first no has been said out loud, to a named stakeholder. ### Day 60 - Something is in production in their environment, or you have escalated the blocker in writing (access, VPC, security review, data). - The reusable pieces are separated from the one-off. - An executive can repeat the outcome in one sentence. ### Day 90 - **First-pod:** a hire two could run your notes without you in the room. That is the playbook. - **Lab / scaled:** you are a net-positive embed on at least one strategic account, and you have not become a shadow support queue. - You can tell the four-slide story from §6 about *this* job, not the last one. If your 90-day plan is “learn the product and build relationships,” you have described every job. First-pod JDs are buying a live system and a playbook. --- ## 8. What first-pod JDs actually say Twelve short quotes. All copied from job pages opened 18 Aug 2026 (`SKILL-MAP-QUOTES.md`). Eight are `first_pod=yes` on the freeze. Four are judgment / customer lines from the same quote file, included because they name the test. **Tacto — Forward Deployed Engineer** (first-pod) “You are one of the first FDEs at Tacto, so you are not slotting into a playbook, you are writing it.” https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/tacto/08260ebb-1abd-472c-8cb0-bf4d6503d460 **Amari — Founding Forward Deployed Engineer** (first-pod) “You will be the first FDE on the team, which means you set the bar.” https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/amari/3b408a6c-b5fa-49f5-acfa-276e03eef664 **Cape — Forward Deployed Engineer, East Asia** (first-pod) “FDE is a small, high-trust team. We're building this together. You will not be handed a playbook, you'll help write it.” https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/Cape/cc18572e-fa2f-46cb-94e9-fcac492314f8 **Sphere — Founding Forward Deployed Engineer** (first-pod) “You won't just be executing a playbook, you'll be defining it as you go.” https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/sphere/7b5f39b0-6f3f-4bc4-9469-74ae9722d85a **Applied Intuition — Forward Deployed Engineer (EMEA)** (first-pod) “building a new Forward Deployed Engineering team in Munich — the first of its kind in our EMEA organization. As a founding FDE…” https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/applied/839a96a2-aec5-4428-b045-ae15633a4a76 **comstruct — Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE)** (first-pod) “you are the technical face of comstruct - the person who turns a signed deal into a live and working systems for the customer.” https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/comstruct/5aab69c9-273a-41dd-a7a6-ad7789a32533 **Airweave — Founding Forward Deployed Engineer** (first-pod) “Build the playbooks and tooling that define how Airweave lands in enterprise.” https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/airweave/jobs/OH2VNh6-founding-forward-deployed-engineer **Warp — Forward Deployed Engineer** (first-pod) “As our Founding Forward Deployed Engineer, you'll be the first hire dedicated to making enterprise implementations successful.” https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/warp/jobs/5749183004 **Poetic — Forward Deployed Engineer** “Agency, judgment, and customer understanding are equally if not more valuable in this role as strong software engineering ability.” https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/poetic/ca54fd9a-55eb-45ae-ba48-f666747a24e8 **Baseten — Forward Deployed Engineer** “Navigate ambiguity and exercise good judgment on tradeoffs and tools needed to solve problems.” https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/baseten/84c1801c-1a65-49fb-aaaa-beeafd530e7e **Amplitude — Engineering: Senior Customer Forward Deployed Engineer** “This is not a traditional support or solutions role. Customer FDEs are engineers first.” https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/amplitude/jobs/8532156002 **Minerva — Forward Deployed Engineer, Data Systems** “You thrive where there's no playbook...you set the goalposts with the customer and build to them.” https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/minerva/5c0c0f22-6908-4780-9c04-3d135b8aedb9 Further first-pod lines on the same quote file, not repeated above: CommodityAI (“You'll be the first FDE hire at a YC-backed AI startup”), Meticulous (“The first Forward Deployed Engineer in San Francisco”), Mintlify (“The Enterprise Solutions team is new and this is a founding seat.”), Dryft (“you'll operate at the intersection of product, engineering, and operations.”). --- ## Scenario bank Six prompts. Each tagged to an opened-JD pattern. Run one out loud, 12 minutes, no slides. These are practice prompts derived from public JD language. They are not leaked questions from any employer. **1. Write the playbook** — Tacto / Cape / Sphere / Airweave (Pattern A). You are the first FDE. There is no runbook. A design partner wants the product in production in six weeks. What do you do in week 1? What do you refuse to promise? What would a hire two read on day 90? **2. Signed deal, nothing live** — comstruct / Warp (Pattern C). The contract is signed. SSO, data model, and the owner of the system of record are unclear. Walk from kickoff to a live system. Name the first no. **3. Ambiguity and tools** — Baseten. The customer wants an agent. Their data is in three places. Two tools would work. One is faster to demo; one will survive production. The VP wants the demo on Friday. Which do you pick, and what do you say? **4. Executive room** — `executive stakeholders` (24/88); Applied Intuition, Dryft, Meticulous, Mintlify. You have 20 minutes with a CRO and a CISO. The champion is a director who oversold. What is on the one slide? What is off it? **5. Their house** — Reducto (VPC to bare metal on-prem); Mintlify (VPC). You do not get admin. Security review is six weeks. What ships before the review, and what does not? Who owns the pager if you ship a subset? **6. New vertical** — Protege, New Verticals (first-pod; the only opened JD that names `first 90 days`). The product works in one industry. This account is the first in a second. What do you reuse? What do you rebuild? What becomes playbook vs one-off? A seventh, if you have time: **Engineer first** — Amplitude / Poetic. A stakeholder asks you to run a workshop and write the SOW. You have two days of engineering time. Do you take it? --- ## 9. How to use this guide 1. Open two reqs from the public freeze (or the live ATS URLs in §8). One first-pod, one not. 2. Write the implied loop from the JD phrases. Use the table in §3. Do not invent rounds the page does not name. 3. Write the four-slide story in §6 for *one* deployment you have actually done. 4. Run one scenario from the bank out loud. Twelve minutes. Record yourself if you can stand it. Do it again against the second req. That is the work. The Sprint (below) is the live version of the same desk. This file is free either way. --- ## Sources - Skill map (counts): `01-market-intelligence/SKILL-MAP.md`, 18 Aug 2026, n = 88. - Quotes: `01-market-intelligence/SKILL-MAP-QUOTES.md`, 18 Aug 2026. Twelve quotes above, each with company + URL. - Freeze: `01-market-intelligence/jobs-db.sourced-95.csv` — 88 opened rows, 30 `first_pod=yes`. - Outline: `04-content/INTERVIEW-GUIDE-OUTLINE.md`. - Title definition: [Wikipedia, *Forward Deployed Engineer*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forward_Deployed_Engineer), 18 Aug 2026. Quote URLs are repeated next to each quote in §4, §5, and §8. --- ## UNVERIFIED / not in v1 - Any named-company interview sequence (including Palantir, OpenAI, Anthropic). - Recruiter-desk reject reasons. - Practitioner first-90-day diaries. - Comp as a promise. Posted bands exist on some freeze rows; we do not turn them into “you will make $X.” - Pulse, Plank, or Indeed index numbers. Different methods, different days. This file uses the opened 88 only. - Contributor bylines. None have opted in yet. When interviews land, the credit line becomes: contributors who opt in, plus FDE Field. Not before. --- ## FDE Field Sprint This guide is free. The live room is a 3-week sprint: **8–26 September 2026**. Six live 75-minute sessions. Judgment, customer scenarios, portfolio narrative, real loops, first 90 days. Not an AI course. No job guarantee. Applying is not a seat. **$2,497** — a price experiment, not a market rate. Invoice, not a card. Charged when we accept you, not when you apply. Your company can invoice. Same seat. Apply by **5 September 2026**. **[APPLICATION]**