fdeops implements this methodology as an installable field kit: skills plus .fde/ artifacts so one human engineer can run client work end to end with an AI coding agent (not a human “agent” on the team).
Forward Deployed Engineers embed directly with customers, bridging the gap between product capability and enterprise reality. Originated as a discipline at companies deploying engineers directly into customer operations. a16z called it "the hottest job in tech."
fdeops is conversational - a senior colleague thinking with you, not a form. Skills teach intent and judgment; they are not scripts to read aloud.
- Trust First: technology serves people. Earn the right to touch production systems.
- Explore Chaotically: do things that don't scale; discover what works before encoding.
- Observe Continuously: real user needs hide in workarounds, not formal requirements.
- Prototype to Learn: rough demos beat polished wrong answers.
- Bridge Business and Technology: every decision must be traceable to customer value.
- Map Before Moving: never modify unknown terrain.
- Embrace Chaos: real enterprise environments are partially unmappable. Operate anyway.
- Brownfield Safety: legacy code is fragile; wrap, don't rewrite. Characterise before changing.
- Ship with Rigour: pre-flight, canary, tested rollback.
- Extract Patterns: every engagement feeds back into the collective intelligence.
The hour before you walk in (or log on) determines the quality of the next two weeks.
Industry cram: Read one industry-specific ops doc, a hospital's patient guide, a bank's compliance brief, or a government procurement summary. You need their vocabulary before they use it.
Org chart: Who owns what? Who can say no? Who is the real decision-maker vs. the one on the invite? Find out before the meeting.
Tech stack recon: Public job postings, GitHub org, Stack Overflow job tags. Know their stack before they tell you.
Tooling and access: Confirm you have VPN, repo access, and a working dev environment before the meeting. "I'm still waiting for access" on day one burns trust immediately.
One hypothesis: Walk in with one falsifiable belief about what the real problem is. You'll probably be wrong. That's the point. It forces you to listen for the correction.
- a16z: "Forward Deployed Engineer: The Hottest Job in Tech"
- Boris Cherny on Lenny's Podcast (Claude Code creation)
- Palantir FDE operations documentation