FDE: The $1M/Year AI Job Explained
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
I know it's crazy, but there are people making a million dollars a year as Ford Deploy engineers. But what exactly is an FDE?
What exactly is an AI Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) and why does it matter?
I know you've probably seen it, but I feel like a lot of people aren't clear as to what it is and how they could become one. Well, in this episode, I brought on my friend Voss. And Voss is a leading expert when it comes to FDEs with his company, Varick Agents. And in this episode, he gives you his entire playbook, how you could become an FTE in 30 days. Now, this episode is for people who want to become an FTE, but also for people who are just interested in what it means, how they can actually use FTEs in their business to make more money, to be more productive. And I just think this is the clearest way. episode the clearest piece of content on the internet the clearest master class for how to understand clearly what an fde is how you could become one and why it matters enjoy the episode and i'll see you at the end
Voss is here, and Voss, by the end of this episode, what are people going to learn?
They're going to learn exactly how to break into forward deploy engineering or become a better FTE in 30 days. The full roadmap for AI forward deploy engineering.
I don't feel like this has been shared anywhere. I feel like the term forward deploy engineer is just on my X feed everywhere. So what I'm hoping for, Voss, is for you to clearly explain what this means and just all the concepts to it and just break it down for me in a clear, easy to understand way
How did Palantir popularize the forward-deployed engineering model?
So I could learn from it, but so others can learn from it too.
Absolutely. And there's a lot of different definitions. Everyone has their own. And I'm going to give you what I think is the clearest explanation. Okay, let's do it. Sweet. So yeah, this has never been shared before. This is something our team put together. It's how to break into FD in 30 days. Let's start off with recent developments and the facts of today. The reality is every company can now buy intelligence. You have a frontier model being released every single day. Just yesterday, we had Kimmy 3 being released. Last week was Fable 5 or GPT 5.6 Sol. Every company can now buy intelligence. And the reality is intelligence is becoming commoditized. So the same foundational capability is becoming available to anybody who can pay for it.
And that's most companies today. So... But you'll see here is a graphic where every company has access to the same foundational model.
How do you decide where AI intelligence should be applied in a company's workflows?
So if everyone can access it, intelligence can no longer be the mode. I think there was this huge theory that people will be priced out of intelligence, and that could be the case in the future. But the reality is today, everyone has access to the same tools. If you go and talk to 50 different enterprise clients, they're all using the same stack. They're all using Cloud Code, Codex. They're using Cursor for model agnosticism. They're using GitHub Copilot. It's all the same thing. So the reality is everyone has the same capability in terms of what intelligence tap they have access to. So where does the advantage go? It goes into deployment. So the edge is no longer who has the intelligence, it's where, how, and why they use it.
And that is the role of an AI forward deployed engineer. It's allowing companies to harness and take advantage of AI intelligence or software previously to make sure that they apply it the best to their specific company context. Every single company is different in terms of how their business is structured, what processes they have, how things run, etc. And the job of an FD is to make sure that the intelligence, which is general, is specifically applied to this company in a way that benefits them the most. And the advantage will start to become who has that best bridge, that connection between their own processes and the intelligence stack that they have access to.
Voss, this was a term that, correct me if I'm wrong, was popularized by the Palantir team, right? That's right. Can you tell me about how Palantir works with FDEs? I feel like for a lot of people, Palantir is this black box.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–0:08
2
What exactly is an AI Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) and why does it matter?
0:08–1:47
3
How did Palantir popularize the forward-deployed engineering model?
1:47–2:45
4
How do you decide where AI intelligence should be applied in a company's workflows?
2:45–5:36
5
What combination of skills makes an FDE highly paid and in-demand?
5:36–10:14
6
What is the audit → evals → deployment loop FDEs use to turn models into value?
10:14–11:20
7
Which LLMs and agent platforms should FDEs pick first and why be model-agnostic later?
11:20–13:28
8
How should you sell audits, de-risk deployments, and scale FDE work inside enterprises?
13:28–51:33