What it's actually like to be a forward deployed engineer

IT Brew takes a close look at the day-to-day of the FDE role through Thomas Baucom, a forward-deployed engineer at Superhuman (the company formerly known as Grammarly). He embeds with clients such as universities and large companies, building custom agents and product fixes, and says anyone looking for a "cookie-cutter" schedule would find the job the worst possible fit.

Gartner senior director analyst Mukul Saha draws a useful line between FDEs and solutions engineers: solutions engineers tend to focus on architecture, technical validation and enabling the sale, while a true FDE goes further into implementation, from problem discovery through production deployment, and feeds lessons back into the core product. Superhuman's chief people officer Kenny Mendes adds that FDEs need consultant-style thinking plus the ability to ship production code, and still go through the same code review as the rest of engineering.

The piece is also a reminder that FDE career paths are not only for classic software engineers. Baucom spent 15 years at Apple in mostly customer-facing roles and moved into the job from customer success, teaching himself the technical side with AI tools. Saha expects the role to keep growing, though the title may shift as companies build similar cross-functional teams in-house.