Forward Deployed Engineering: What It Is, What It Isn't, and When It Matters

An industry explainer on forward deployed engineering, the fastest-growing role in enterprise software. Covers how the FDE blends software engineering, implementation, and product management, why AI moved the bottleneck from product capability to customer adoption, the margin risk of bespoke work and the productization loop that resolves it, and the four conditions that determine whether a company should run the function.