I remember interviewing at Palantir back when they were making this role popular (probably a decade ago). I wanted to be an SDE and the recruiter kept pushing me towards this “forward deployed engineer” role. After hearing the pitch I went…oh so you want me to be a sales consultant? They did not take this well, I guess because Palantir was trying very hard to convince the world they were a tech unicorn and not a glorified consulting firm.

Yeah, I'm reading this and find myself wondering what's so new about this. Haven't tech companies always had this role? I suppose Forward Deployed Engineer sounds more like an engineering role than Sales Consultant, which sounds like you're a salesman rather than an engineer, so it feels to me like this is mostly PR to make the role more attractive to engineers.

It's certainly working on me, because I like talking with stakeholders and identifying problems I can solve, and I don't like sales. I'm far more likely to apply as Forward Deployed Engineer.

If you are sales then you get a (hopefully fat) sales commission.

If you are forward deployed then you get deployed forward (away from comfortable home office).