mixed · career
The forward-deployed engineer bootcamp
The role that appeared everywhere in the last two years: engineering done in the customers stack, in front of the customer.
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By Amit Chakraborty — Kolkata, India · Remote worldwide
What you will be able to do
Scope, build and hand over customer-facing work, and interview for the role credibly.
Syllabus — 12 chapters
- 1. What a forward-deployed engineer is, and why the role exists now — Describe the role precisely enough to decide whether you want it.
- 2. The first customer meeting — Listen for the actual problem underneath the request.
- 3. Scoping under uncertainty — Commit to something specific without pretending to certainty you lack.
- 4. Building inside someone elses stack — Work productively in a codebase and toolchain you did not choose.
- 5. Integration work: the things nobody documented — Get data out of a system whose owners have left.
- 6. Demos that survive questions — Show working software to a sceptical room.
- 7. Answering can it do that, honestly — Handle capability questions without overpromising or killing the deal.
- 8. Prototype to production: the handover that usually fails — Design the transition from the first day rather than the last.
- 9. Support, escalation and the on-site incident — Operate when the person affected is standing next to you.
- 10. Measuring value so renewal is not a negotiation — Instrument the outcome the customer is buying.
- 11. Working with sales without becoming sales — Hold an engineering position inside a commercial conversation.
- 12. The career: what the role leads to — Evaluate an offer and ask the questions that reveal the reality.
0 of 12 published. A new chapter every Saturday morning. Free to read.
Learn it free, elsewhere too
The documentation, videos, books and practice sites worth your time on this subject. All free. None of it is mine.