The Forward Deployed Engineer Playbook

The whole role on one sheet — discover the problem, prototype fast, integrate, deploy in the customer’s world, demo, harden, hand off.

The loop

1. Discover: Sit with the user. Find the real problem and the metric that proves it’s solved — not the feature they asked for.
2. Prototype: Build the smallest thing that demos the value this week. Throwaway is fine; a slide is not a POC.
3. Integrate: Connect to their real systems (auth, data, APIs). Integration is where POCs die — de-risk it first.
4. Deploy: Ship it where they can use it — their cloud/VPC/on-prem. Match their security reality.
5. Demo: Tell a story with their data. End on the "so what". Have a fallback for live failure.
6. Harden: Turn the POC into a system: errors, retries, monitoring, a runbook.
7. Hand off: Enable their team. Docs + training. Avoid owning it forever.

Owns the outcome: Not "I shipped the ticket" — "the customer got value". You’re measured on their success.
Full-stack + human: Backend, frontend, data, deploy — plus discovery, demos, and stakeholder trust.
Speed over polish: A working thing in front of a user beats a perfect thing next quarter.
Reads the room: Exec wants ROI; IT wants security; the user wants their day easier. Speak to each.

Building in a vacuum: Weeks of work, no customer contact → wrong thing. Demo weekly.
Boiling the ocean: Trying to solve everything → nothing ships. Pick one workflow.
Ignoring security early: A great POC that security vetoes at the end. Involve them in week one.
Forever-ownership: No handoff → you become their support team. Plan the exit from day one.