Having held a similiar position for IBM, personally I just don't like dealing with customers. Some are great, others are just a pain ... I like my machines better :-)

You might have more luck looking at people with 'pre-sales engineer' experience for the role? They are used to lots of customer engagement ?

FYI you might want to do this via [ask hn] to get a more appropriate response.

Regarding your question, there needs to be more context- specifically why do you need an fde that you can’t do via backend engineer. Palantir was special and it’s incorrect to use broad strokes to apply to every company