Why FDEs Aren’t Sales Engineers (and How the Model Is Different)

Is the Forward Deployed Engineer just old wine in a new bottle?

A lot of people think it’s a glorified Sales Engineer.
I disagree — and I would know… I was an SE, then hired and led hundreds of them.

I still love Sales Engineers but the real innovation isn’t the title.
It’s that FDEs own the outcome from vision to millions in expanding ARR.

Quick, honest breakdown:

Traditional Solutions Engineer (the heroes):
- Builds convincing PoCs and demos
- Hands off at signature with a detailed architecture/implementation doc
- Success = “We won the bake-off and the CFO nodded”
Flies home that night

Forward Deployed Engineer :
- Writes and ships the actual production code
- Lives in the customer’s Jira, Slack, and on-prem vault for 60–180 days post-signature
- Success = Year-2 expansion that makes the CFO cry happy tears because it actually works in the real mess
Flies home when the customer forgets they’re not a full-time employee

Most companies already have 2–3 people quietly doing this today.  We just call them “that hero SE who saved the quarter” or “the senior CSE who hasn’t taken vacation in 18 months.”

Here’s the part most people miss (and the AI-native companies are already exploiting):
That customer-specific code the FDE wrote? It gets brought back, generalized, and shipped to the entire customer base.
That’s product roadmap on steroids.
These new AI companies are shaping the future of work and roles under our feet.