What is a Forward Deployed Engineer? (with Founding Rippling FDE)

章节 1：FDE 的适用场景与市场价值

📝 本节摘要：

Kevin 认为，企业是否需要 FDE，取决于产品的技术复杂度和客户的技术能力。技术产品若面向缺乏技术团队的传统行业，客户难以独立把软件转化为业务成果，FDE 便能弥合这一差距。随着 AI 让解决方案更强大也更复杂，FDE 的价值正在上升；但不应为了追逐风潮而盲目设立这一职能。

[原文] [Stephen]: What key skills should I really brush up on that would really help me shine in the interview process? Hey everyone, I'm super excited to be here with Kevin B. We're going to be talking about forward deployed engineering and the forward deployed engineering interview. But first, before we get into the conversation and talk more about FDE, Kevin, can you just introduce yourself really quickly for the audience?

[译文] [Stephen]: 为了在面试中脱颖而出，我应该重点复习哪些技能？大家好，我很高兴能和 Kevin B. 一起聊聊前沿部署工程师（FDE）以及相关面试。不过在正式开始之前，Kevin，你能先简单向大家介绍一下自己吗？

[原文] [Kevin Bai]: Yeah, happy to. Hi there, Stephen, and hi there, audience listening at home. My name is Kevin. I am an FDE at Rippling. I was the first person to join just over a year ago to help them build the function. That's gone pretty well. Before that, I was at Palantir for a number of years. I joined in '21, which is a pretty long while ago given the history of things and how the stock has progressed. But yeah, I am pretty interested in the FDE space as a whole. I actually think this is the single best way to win in enterprise. And so, in addition to my day job, I also go around to conferences to speak about FDE, and then I also work with founders and different kinds of companies to help

[译文] [Kevin Bai]: 当然可以。Stephen 你好，也向正在收听的各位问好。我叫 Kevin，是 Rippling 的一名 FDE。一年多前我加入公司，是第一位负责帮他们搭建这项职能的人，目前进展相当不错。在那之前，我在 Palantir 工作了好几年，2021 年加入。考虑到公司这些年的发展和股价走势，那已经算是挺久以前了。我一直很关注 FDE 这个领域，甚至认为这是在企业市场取胜的最佳方式。除了日常工作，我也会参加各种会议，分享 FDE 相关话题，还会和创业者及不同类型的公司合作，帮助他们……

[原文] [Kevin Bai]: them set up FTE functions.

[译文] [Kevin Bai]: ……建立 FDE 团队。

[原文] [Stephen]: Cool. And we'll hear a lot more about you and your background in just a moment. I just maybe wanted to start by sharing a little bit more about what's happening in the market, how it's affecting you, and how you're seeing the FDE role grow. I'm happy to share a little bit more about where we're seeing things and how things started there, too. So, high level, one of the things that I always try to establish when I'm working with founders or companies is: Do you need an FDE function? Because it's very easy to get into the hype of it and think that this is what you need to do to raise money, or this is what you need to do because this is the common wisdom.

[译文] [Stephen]: 好。稍后我们会详细聊聊你的经历和背景。我想先谈谈市场上正在发生什么，这些变化对你有什么影响，以及你怎么看 FDE 这个岗位的发展。我也可以分享一下我们观察到的情况，以及这个岗位最初是怎么发展起来的。先从大方向说起：我和创业者或公司合作时，总会先问一个问题：你们真的需要 FDE 团队吗？因为人很容易被这股热潮带着走，以为想融资就得这么做，或者觉得大家都这么说，那自己也应该这么做。

[原文] [Kevin Bai]: I think that's really dumb. Broadly speaking, who are you selling to, and then what are you selling? These are the questions that I try and ask as a framing mechanism. So, if you're selling something very technical, very complex—think the Anthropic API or GitHub as a product—yes, they're technical, but the buyer is a software engineer, or the profile would be CIO or CTO, and they're very technically capable. They can understand it and make use of it on their own, so that's okay. If, on the other hand, you're selling something like Slack or Jira, your tool is not that technical, but your end user mostly isn't that technical either. So there's great alignment. Where you need FDE, or where FDE starts to make sense, is if you have a very technical product and an ICP, ideal

[译文] [Kevin Bai]: 我觉得那样做很蠢。大体来说，我会先问两个问题：你卖给谁？你卖的是什么？这是我用来梳理问题的框架。假如你卖的是非常专业、复杂的产品，比如 Anthropic API，或者 GitHub 这样的产品，虽然它们技术性很强，但买家通常是软件工程师，或者 CIO、CTO 这类具备很强技术能力的人。他们能自己理解并使用产品，这就没问题。反过来，如果你卖的是 Slack 或 Jira 这样的工具，产品本身不算特别技术化，终端用户通常也不太懂技术，因此两者很匹配。FDE 开始发挥作用的情况是：你的产品技术性很强，但你的理想客户画像（ICP，Ideal Customer Profile）……

[原文] [Kevin Bai]: customer profile, right, who is not technical. And so, for the case of Palantir, that's what it was for Foundry, our big data platform and our app-building platform, where we were selling to Fortune 500s, but not technology companies, right? CPG, manufacturing, aviation—all of these places where there were huge, massive problems that deserved really great solutions, but there was no one there on the other side to really make sense of our software and their problem in a way that was really going to solve things and create a good outcome for them. And so that's kind of where I would think about FDE to begin with. Obviously, in this day and age, agent AI has made it easier than ever to build a really powerful solution, but also, really powerful in the age of AI means really complicated. Most of your

[译文] [Kevin Bai]: ……却缺乏技术能力。Palantir 的情况就是如此：我们用 Foundry 这个大数据和应用构建平台服务财富 500 强企业，但客户并非科技公司，而是消费品、制造业、航空业等行业。这些企业有许多亟待解决的重大问题，也值得拥有出色的解决方案，但客户一方往往没有人能把我们的软件和他们的问题对应起来，真正解决问题并带来好的结果。这就是我理解 FDE 的起点。如今，智能体 AI 让打造强大解决方案比以往容易得多；但在 AI 时代，强大的解决方案也意味着复杂。你的大多数……

[原文] [Kevin Bai]: customers, if you're selling into a traditional industry, probably have no idea what agents are, or probably only have a cursory idea of what it means to use LLMs. And so it's a pretty good idea not to have their lack of technical talent on payroll be the barrier to the success of your startup. And so that's broadly how I think about FDE and why I think it's on the rise now.

[译文] [Kevin Bai]: ……客户如果来自传统行业，很可能根本不知道智能体是什么，或者只对如何使用大语言模型（LLM）略知一二。所以，别让客户缺乏技术人才、没有技术人员在岗，成为你的创业公司无法成功的障碍，这样做很有道理。这大体上就是我对 FDE 的理解，也是我认为它如今越来越受重视的原因。