Amazon hired me as a software engineer<\/a> out of college, and it was a big learning opportunity, teaching me the fundamentals of engineering.<\/p>\n But it was a behemoth of a company, and I eventually wanted to work in a smaller environment where I could take more personal ownership over product decisions and learn more on the job.<\/p>\n After 2 \u00bd years at Amazon, I interviewed at a sales startup called Actively AI, where I landed a role in forward-deployed engineering<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n Every time Charissa publishes a story, you’ll get an alert straight to your inbox!\n <\/p>\n \n Stay connected to Charissa and get more of their work as it publishes.\n <\/p>\n The “FDE” role was popularized by Palantir<\/a>, and it has been described as the “hottest role in AI<\/a>.” I liked that it combined software engineering with understanding business.<\/p>\n Do you have a story to share about landing a “hot” AI job? Contact this reporter at ccheong@businessinsider.com<\/a><\/p>\n I spent roughly six months at Actively AI before I joined the AI-forward HR tech company Rippling as a senior FDE, in October 2025.<\/p>\n I’ve now been an FDE for roughly a year. Put simply, I’m a customer-facing engineer who tailors our product to each client. They describe their challenges and needs, and I build solutions and customizations.<\/p>\n Here’s what my day-to-day is like, and the skills you need to break into this role.<\/p>\n My primary job is listening to customers. The results are very rewarding.<\/p>\n Software engineers can feel far removed from customers, because they often can’t see their impact. In this job, I’m closer to the front lines.<\/p>\n A core software engineer can build something that serves the majority of use cases, but AI tools<\/a> usually need more customization to work properly than regular software features. That’s when an FDE steps in.<\/p>\n For example, a restaurant chain might have a labor-intensive process for tracking their payroll data that involves spreadsheets and manual data entry, which I’d help them to eliminate within Rippling’s platform by using custom code and AI.<\/p>\n My primary job is listening to customers and understanding their problems, which was a learning curve for me, coming from a software engineering background. On a day-to-day basis, I’m in a lot of customer meetings, including visiting businesses who use our product to talk with employees about their experience with it. I probably spend an equal amount of time coding solutions and interacting with our core product teams.<\/p>\n Bhatnagar said he spends a lot of time talking to customers as an FDE.\u00a0<\/p>\n Courtesy of Kanav Bhatnagar<\/p>\n Context-switching is an important skill to master in this job, where you could go from talking to a customer to debugging something to jumping onto another customer call shortly after.<\/p>\n I don’t rely on an engineer to code something for me. I make a lot of decisions about the shape of the product and how to execute on it, which I really enjoy. It’s very rewarding when a customer looks at what I’ve built after multiple iterations and says, “This is exactly what I wanted.”<\/p>\n Technical and communication skills are equally important as an FDE<\/p>\n I think it would be pretty hard, although not impossible, to become an FDE without a technical background. With the dawn of vibe coding<\/a>, it might become easier, though.<\/p>\n In my experience, FDE interviews feature technical rounds that test your coding skills<\/a>, like in traditional software engineering interviews. You also have to show you can talk with any customer, including non-technical people, by asking the right questions to understand a customer’s problem, and talk through how you’d design the solution.<\/p>\n To prepare for interviews, I have used consulting industry<\/a> interview questions, which require you to explain how you’d meet client requests. I think both fields overlap, requiring rapid diagnosis, clarifying questions, and a clear plan of action.<\/p>\n There’s probably more breadth than depth of technical knowledge required. In today’s age of rapidly evolving technology, I try to spend time outside of work understanding what’s new in the AI world and what new AI tools I can be using in my workflow by talking to colleagues and researching online.<\/p>\n I think my job is preparing me to be a founder one day<\/p>\n I’m interested in founding my own company one day, and I’ve previously heard someone describing the FDE role as a founder bootcamp<\/a>. It provides a good foundational layer for entrepreneurship, helping you understand how a business functions from the sales process to how to build things.<\/p>\n Bhatnagar thinks the FDE role is here to stay.\u00a0<\/p>\n Courtesy of Kanav Bhatnagar<\/p>\n The FDE role is evolving and no one really knows what direction it’s heading in. Even if AI turns out to be unprofitable, I think FDEs will still have a place because of the demand for customer software. Products are becoming easier to build, and people in this role will be needed to handle large contracts with clients.<\/p>\n![\"Charissa](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1774190469_891_68de7e61cc993f9955cf5fc5.jpeg\")
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