Is AI FDE a Made-Up Title?

On the hype, the hate, and who this role is actually for

Hey, Prasad here 👋 I’m the voice behind the weekly newsletter “Big Tech Careers.”

This week’s post comes from a special guest Milos Mandic, Forward Deployed Engineer at Lleverage and author of the FDE Hub newsletter, where he shares insights from his experience as an FDE and interviews others in the role.

If you’re curious about what it means to be a Forward Deployed Engineer, I highly recommend following him on LinkedIn and subscribing to his newsletter.

If you like the article, click the ❤️ icon. That helps me know you enjoy reading my content.

Over to you, Milos!

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The FDE role has been getting a lot of attention lately, and with attention comes skepticism. I’ve seen the comments on LinkedIn, the Reddit threads, the Twitter dunks. “It’s just professional services with a fancy title.” “Glorified consultant.” “Military cosplay for tech bros.”

I get it. New titles invite mockery. It’s human nature.

About two years ago, I was at a spontaneous standup comedy show in Cork with a friend who works as a product manager. The comedian spotted him in the crowd, heard the title, and paused. “Product manager? That sounds like a fancy title for a drug dealer.” Beat. “What exactly is the product?”

The room laughed. My friend laughed. I laughed.

Tech has a title problem. We keep inventing new ones, and outsiders keep assuming we’re either making them up or hiding something. Sometimes both.

Fifteen years ago, when I started university, “software engineer” was still fighting for legitimacy. People who “just wrote code” weren’t considered real engineers. The title felt aspirational, maybe even a bit pretentious. Who’s questioning it now?

Titles evolve. What matters is what you actually do and what you learn doing it.

So let me tell you why I chose this path, and more importantly, who probably shouldn’t.

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The entrepreneurship training ground

Naval Ravikant has a famous line: “Learn to sell. Learn to build. If you can do both, you will be unstoppable.”

I’ve been an entrepreneur before. It runs in my blood. And when I look at the FDE role through that lens, I see something most people miss.

This role is entrepreneurship training with a salary.

Every week, I’m selling. Not in the quota-carrying, commission-driven sense. But selling nonetheless. Selling a technical approach to a skeptical stakeholder. Selling patience to a client who wants everything yesterday. Selling the idea that the first version won’t be perfect, and that’s okay.

Every week, I’m building. Not just code. Workflows. Integrations. Trust.

Every week, I’m sitting with customers, watching them work, spotting problems they didn’t know they had. That pattern recognition is invaluable. It’s the kind of market insight founders pay consultants thousands for, and I’m getting it as part of the job.

I’ve picked up knowledge in domains I never expected. I couldn’t pass a chartered accountant exam, but I’ve become surprisingly proficient in bookkeeping. I’ve learned how insurance claims get processed, how logistics companies optimise routes, how wholesale distributors manage inventory. None of this was in the job description. All of it compounds.

If you want to start a company someday, or if you’ve already tried and want to try again, this role puts you in the best possible position. You develop the full stack of entrepreneurial skills while someone else handles payroll.

Who shouldn’t do this

Not everyone should be an FDE. I mean this genuinely, not as gatekeeping.

In my analysis of nearly 2,000 FDE profiles, the average FDE has 12 years of industry experience. That’s not a coincidence. This role requires a certain baseline of confidence, autonomy, and accumulated judgement.

When I started at Lleverage, there was no playbook. No onboarding manual that told me how to handle a client who changes requirements mid-sprint, or how to push back on a sales promise that’s technically impossible, or how to know when a project should be killed rather than saved. We figured it out. We had to.

If you need guidance, if you thrive with clear expectations and well-defined processes, this role will break you. Not because it’s harder than other roles. Because it’s differently hard. The ambiguity is the job.

There’s another reason to stay away: if you don’t care about the breadth.

Maybe you’re a world-class software engineer. Maybe you’ve spent years mastering distributed systems or compiler design or machine learning infrastructure. That depth is valuable. The world needs people who go deep.

FDEs don’t go deep. We go wide.

Jack of all trades, master of none. I used to hear that as an insult. Now I see it as a job description. Most FDEs will never be the best engineer, the best salesperson, or the best product thinker in any room. But we might be the only person in the room who can do all three passably well, in the same afternoon, for different clients.

It turns out the world needs people like that too.

On the hate

I want to address something directly.

The criticism of this role often boils down to: “This isn’t new. You’re just consultants. You’re just sales engineers. You’re just solutions architects with better marketing.”

There’s some truth there. The activities aren’t entirely new. People have been deploying software at client sites for decades.

But the context is new.

AI has changed what’s possible in a single deployment. The productivity gains mean smaller teams can do more. The pace of model improvements means yesterday’s impossible is today’s afternoon project. The ambiguity of what AI can actually do in a specific business context means someone needs to figure it out on the ground, in real time, with real stakes.

That’s the FDE role in 2026.

Is it a fancy title? Sure. So is “software engineer.” So is “product manager.” So is every title that didn’t exist fifty years ago. The question isn’t whether the title is new. The question is whether the work creates value.

I think it does. But I’m biased.

Looking forward

There’s always risk in any career bet. Technology moves fast. The role that exists today might not exist in five years, or it might look completely different.

But here’s what I’ve noticed: FDEs are positioned better than most to adapt.

We’re stretched thin by design. We’re always looking for the most optimal way to do something because we have to be. We’re at the bleeding edge not because we’re early adopters by personality, but because the job demands it. When new tools emerge, we’re often the first to try them, because our productivity depends on it.

This role wouldn’t exist in its current form without AI. And if AI continues to reshape how work gets done, FDEs will be among the first to know, because we’ll be the ones doing the reshaping.

That’s not a guarantee. It’s a bet. But it’s a bet I’m comfortable making.

The real question

If you’re considering this path, ask yourself:

Do you thrive in ambiguity, or does it drain you?

Can you sell an idea to a sceptical room without feeling like you’ve betrayed your engineering soul?

Are you okay being pretty good at many things rather than exceptional at one?

Do you have the agency to figure things out when no one’s going to tell you what to do?

If yes, this might be your path.

If no, that’s not a failure. It’s self-knowledge. The world needs specialists. The world needs people who go deep. The FDE path isn’t better. It’s just different.

I chose it because it matches how my brain works. Because it feeds the entrepreneurial itch without the existential risk. Because every week teaches me something I didn’t know I needed to learn.

Your reasons might be different. Or this might not be for you at all.

Both are fine.

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I would like to extend a big thank you to Milos Mandic for sharing his insights with Big Tech Careers readers.

I encourage you to subscribe to his newsletter, FDE Hub, to learn more about the FDE role.

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If you are looking to transition to AI FDE role, these articles will be helpful

1. The Role of Forward Deployed Engineers (FDE) in the AI Era

The Role of Forward Deployed Engineers (FDE) in the AI Era

2. How to Transition from a Developer or Architect to AI FDE roles -

How to Transition from a Developer or Architect to AI FDE roles

3. Skills You Need for AI FDE Roles at OpenAI, Anthropic, NVIDIA, Databricks & Salesforce

Skills You Need for AI FDE Roles at OpenAI, Anthropic, NVIDIA, Databricks & Salesforce

Want to be become an AI FDE, register your interest for 4-6 week FDE course.

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