Inside OpenAI’s Forward Deployed Engineer Role

Written by AI

TLDR: Colin Jarvis, OpenAI's Global Head of Forward Deployed Engineering, describes an FDE org that grew from 2 to 140 people alongside a 200-person deployment company.
Filed note: Gregor Ojstersek’s interview with OpenAI’s FDE lead explains how the team sits between customers, product, and research, and why the job mixes engineering with on-site problem discovery.

Highlights: A forward deployed engineer is focused on outcomes. Which means that their goal should be to work on problems where solving them has a much bigger impact than the work itself.
Colin Jarvis's definition of the role
They started with just 2 people and have now grown to around 140 people in the FDE org.
An FDE might spend the full day talking with the payments team to understand what specific things are important to them so that the migration would be successful.
They generally tell new joiners to expect around 50% of their time on site.
Excerpt: The Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) role has gained a lot of popularity in recent years, and OpenAI is a good example of fast scaling of their FDE organization. Additionally, they recently built a separate entity called the OpenAI Deployment Company, focused on helping customers use OpenAI’s products.
From newsletter.eng-leadership.com