About us
Forward Deployed Engineers are right now the hottest role in AI. OpenAI, Anthropic, Palantir, Scale AI, and dozens of scale-ups are hiring FDEs at a pace that's grown roughly 40x in two years, and almost nobody actually knows what the role is, how to prepare for it, or how to land the interview.
This group is for software engineers who want to make the jump: stop writing code in the abstract and start building AI solutions directly with real clients, in production, with equity and no sales quota attached.
Who is this for?
Software engineers looking to move into FDE / AI implementation engineer roles
Solutions engineers who want to go from running demos to shipping production code
People already working as FDEs who want market signal and networking
Founders and hiring managers actively hiring for these roles
What we'll actually do
Monthly events in San Francisco, built to be practical, not generic panel talks:
FDE mock interviews with real feedback on how the role is actually evaluated (production engineering + client communication + ability to learn an unfamiliar domain fast)
"How to qualify as (or hire) an FDE" — sessions on RAG pipelines, evals, agents, and the architectures that actually come up in these interviews today
AMAs with current FDEs from frontier labs and scale-ups, talking through what the day-to-day is really like
Targeted networking between candidates and companies actively hiring right now
Why this group and not another one
We're not generalist recruiters selling hype. The people running this have actually built, and can tell the difference between a brilliant backend engineer who freezes in front of a client, and someone who can genuinely operate as an FDE. That's the filter. If you can pass it, you're in the room with people who can actually help you get hired, or help you hire well.
Upcoming events
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