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FDE Advisory

Build a world-class Forward Deployed Engineering organization.

You've heard about FDEs. Maybe from Palantir's success stories, or The Pragmatic Engineer's deep dive, or from watching AI companies scale with FDE-first models.

Now you want to build one. But where do you start?

The Challenge

Most FDE programs fail because organizations:

Hire wrong. Standard engineering interviews miss FDE-critical traits: pain tolerance, ownership mindset, learning velocity, and client-facing capability.

Structure wrong. Unclear ownership between FDE and Product teams creates friction that kills deployments.

Enable wrong. Products that aren't FDE-ready force engineers to spend 70% of their time fighting internal systems instead of solving customer problems.

Why Work With Us?

Credential
7 years at Palantir Ran FDE hiring for commercial and UK operations
1,000+ technical interviews Calibrated evaluation systems at scale
Featured in The Pragmatic Engineer The definitive article on FDE
Active FDE advisory clients Currently engaged with multiple enterprise and growth-stage companies
Open source FDE materials fde-advisory-materials

What We Offer

FDE Hiring System Design

Design a hiring process that actually identifies great FDEs.

Most companies fail at FDE hiring because they use standard engineering interviews. We build hiring systems that test for what matters:

  • Hiring thesis framework — Document rationale for every hire
  • Custom interview rounds — Learning & Reengineering, Decomposition, behavioral assessments
  • Evaluation scorecards — Calibrated rubrics for FDE-specific traits
  • Interviewer training — Calibrate your team on what good looks like

Deliverables: Interview process design, question bank, scorecards, interviewer training materials.

FDE Organizational Design

Structure your FDE org for success from day one.

We help you answer the hard questions:

  • How should FDEs and Product teams work together?
  • What ownership boundaries prevent friction?
  • How do you build culture around radical ownership?
  • How do you measure FDE performance?

Deliverables: Org structure recommendation, operating model, FDE-Product interface agreement, metrics framework.

Interviewing as a Service

Scale FDE hiring without burning out your senior engineers.

We provide expert interviewers trained in Palantir-style FDE evaluation:

  • Technical and behavioral interviews by Palantir/Google-trained interviewers
  • Detailed candidate reports with hire/no-hire recommendations
  • 24-hour turnaround
  • Frees hundreds of hours of your team's time

Ideal for: Companies with established FDE process needing bandwidth to hire faster.

Embedded FDE Advisor

Fractional Head of FDE for your critical build phase.

For companies making a serious bet on FDE, we embed as your strategic partner:

  • Full hiring oversight — from sourcing to close
  • Organizational design and implementation
  • FDE-Product interface establishment
  • Onboarding program design
  • Weekly strategic reviews

Ideal for: Well-funded companies building a core FDE team of 5-10+ engineers.

Free Resources

Start building your FDE program today with our open-source materials:

📚 FDE Advisory Materials — Complete documentation site

Includes:

Deep dives on FDE philosophy and practice:

Ready to Build Your FDE Team?

Let's talk about what you're trying to build.

Email: work@platypustech.xyz

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/anjor-kanekar

Scheduling: Book a call