Design, forward deployed.

For too long, the solution has been Forward Deployed Engineers (FDEs). This decades-old practice, pioneered by Palantir, is pretty simple: startups send FDEs to work directly with customers, helping teams adopt the AI they’ve purchased while training the technology to function within that specific business context.

The demand for this sort of role is real. Monthly job listings for Forward Deployed Engineers increased over 800% in 2025 according to Indeed. 

But we can do it better. 

Forward Deployed Engineers are tasked with taking an existing product and applying it to a customer's business needs. This can be effective, but only if the product and technology stack is a good fit in the first place. If not, you end up with solutions without a problem. The AI goes unadopted by your team. 

We've found a lot more success in starting early. We place designers (with product and engineering chops) into early customer engagements where they can build the product around the client. They use the many tools available to them to quickly iterate and visualize solutions that client and customer teams actually need. In short, there is no existing product. It’s built specifically for the client.

We call these designers “Forward Deployed Designers.” 

But why designers instead of engineers? 

Our core belief is that the “hard part” is not building AI solutions – it’s discovering all the opportunities, use cases, and applications for this new AI-enabled technology. That’s the work of a designer. 

Using AI-coding tools like Cursor and Lovable, our Forward Deployed Designers can build engineer-quality AI solutions with a designer’s approach to discovering and solving a business’ unique use cases.