Fantastic. Nothing to add, but I pulled out the money quotes for a super fast skim (IMO):

> why AI companies are in desperate need of them [FDEs]

> the only competitive edge is how and where you use it [intelligence]

> determining how and where companies use it [intelligence] becomes the most important role

> that is the role of a forward deployed engineer

> Businesses hire an Applied AI company...to help them get the most out of the technology.

> gives them access to a team that has already done large-scale AI transformations...make clients move much faster than their competitors

> FDE is a highly skilled engineer who can understand the customer's problems very deeply, write code into a code base they've potentially never seen before, and communicate the business impact to a non-technical decision maker to close the deal

> be on-site with a customer

> to see real efficiency gains, a company needs to be rebuilt around AI from the ground up...only possible through sitting with the customer and building custom agents that are engineered on company-specific data, with company-specific context

> three main parts of an Applied AI FDE's job: Audit, Evals, and Deployment

> Audit: ...onsite...mapping processes/workflows...example: two weeks with rev ops, one week with procurement, and a full month with finance...determining what should be automated vs what shouldn't...agents can create more problems than they solve...[elaboration]

> Evals: ...correct...thinking like a human would...[elaboration]

> Deployment: ...existing data layer...orchestrator to query...execution environment to test...debug...[elaboration]

> [how to break in]...build projects...explain every single component...30-day plan...

> FDE is the most in-demand role in tech right now