Forward Deployed Engineering 101 — Kevin Bai, Anthropic, ex Palantir & Rippling Founding FDE

章节 1：前沿部署工程的背景与本次演讲内容

📝 本节摘要：

Kevin Bai介绍了自己在 Anthropic 应用 AI 团队及 Rippling、Palantir 的经历，并说明本次演讲将围绕前沿部署工程（FDE）展开：回顾这一岗位的历史与职能，解释 Palantir 为何采用这种市场拓展方式，并讨论其他组织如何借鉴。他也介绍了 Foundry 如何整合数据、建立本体并支持应用开发。

[原文] [Kevin Bai]: All right. Thank you so much, Basil, for the introduction. Hello there. Those of you in the audience, thank you so much for joining us today. My name is Kevin. Technically, we don't really have titles, so I am a member of technical staff at Anthropic, working on the applied AI team. Before this, I joined Rippling to help build their FDE function. I was the first person to join that team, and we grew it to around 25 in a year. And so that's pretty cool.

[译文] [Kevin Bai]: 好的，非常感谢 Basil 的介绍。各位现场的朋友，大家好，也非常感谢大家今天来参加活动。我叫 Kevin。严格来说，我们没有什么头衔，所以我的职位是 Anthropic 的技术团队成员，在应用 AI 团队工作。在此之前，我加入 Rippling，帮助他们组建前沿部署工程团队。我是第一位加入这个团队的人，一年里我们把团队扩大到了大约 25 人。这挺不错的。

[原文] [Kevin Bai]: And then before that, I did a bunch of stuff at Palantir. But, you know, a list of companies isn't really that interesting, right? Because we're talking about a function. And what I hope you're all here for is to hear about forward deployed engineering. If you're here for evals, or videos of kittens, that's probably one room over. I'm also not qualified to talk about those things. So I'm going to give you a talk on Forward Deployed Engineering 101. I want to walk you through the history of the role, the nature of the function, why Palantir chose to adopt FDE as its go-to-market motion, and then extend that to how you could apply it to your own organizations and businesses. And if possible, at the

[译文] [Kevin Bai]: 再往前，我在 Palantir 做过不少事情。不过，大家知道，列公司名单其实没什么意思，因为我们今天要聊的是一种职能。我希望大家来这里是想了解前沿部署工程。如果你是来听评测，或者来看小猫视频的，那大概得去隔壁厅了；而且我也没资格讲这些。所以今天我想给大家介绍前沿部署工程入门。我会带大家回顾这个岗位的历史和职能特点，讲讲 Palantir 为什么选择把 FDE 作为市场拓展方式，最后再谈谈你们如何把它应用到自己的组织和业务中。如果时间允许，在

[原文] [Kevin Bai]: end, I'd love to take any and all questions. All right, does that sound good?

[译文] [Kevin Bai]: 最后，我也很愿意回答大家的问题。好，听起来怎么样？

[原文] [Kevin Bai]: Yeah. Okay, that's too low-energy. Does that sound good?

[译文] [Kevin Bai]: 好。嗯，大家回应得太没劲了。这样安排听起来怎么样？

[原文] [Kevin Bai]: There we go. Oh my God, it's a conference, not a funeral. Let's go. So, okay, high level, right? What does Palantir do? Palantir is a technology company that creates a technology platform, a software platform called Foundry. Foundry enables organizations of arbitrary size to centralize all of their data in one place and create an ontology. What that means is turning their data into proper nouns. So instead of having, you know, table one, table two, table three, if you have warehouses, you have a single table that's the source of truth for warehouses. And then on top of that, Foundry enables companies to build applications. Okay. So if I were to explain that to some industry leader, they would be like, "Cool, you've made my data organized, but what does that do for my actual business?" Right?

[译文] [Kevin Bai]: 这就对了。天哪，这是场会议，不是葬礼。来点精神！好，我们先从大方向说起：Palantir 是做什么的？Palantir 是一家科技公司，打造了一个名为 Foundry 的软件平台。Foundry 能让各种规模的组织把所有数据集中到一处，并建立本体。所谓本体，就是把数据转化为具体的业务实体。这样一来，你就不必再面对表一、表二、表三；如果管理的是仓库，就可以有一张作为仓库数据唯一事实来源的表。在此基础上，Foundry 还能让企业构建应用。好，如果我把这番话讲给某位行业领袖听，对方可能会说：“不错，你把我的数据整理好了，可这对我的实际业务有什么帮助？”对吧？