💻 The Forward-Deployed Engineer 🤖 Playbook 📖 (opens in new tab)

A practical, straight-to-the-point field manual for the role The New Stack calls "AI's hottest job" and a16z calls "the hottest job in tech." 📑 Table of Contents ⚡ TL;DR 🧭 Part 1 — What an FDE Actually Is 📈 Part 2 — Why the Role Exploded (2025–2026) 🛠️ Part 3 — The 5-Phase Deployment Method ⏱️ Part 4 — How FDEs Spend Their Time 🧰 Part 5 — The Skill Stack 🚪 Part 6 — How to Break In (30/60/90) 🎯 Part 7 — Interview Prep 🏗️ Part 8 — For Founders: Building an FDE Function ⚠️ Part 9 — The Honest Ca...