If you read the first piece about forward deployed engineers, you probably landed on one of two reactions.
Either: "that's exactly what we need." Or: "that sounds great, but we can't afford to hire for this."
Both make sense. An FDE typically earns $150,000 to $200,000 a year, and that's before you factor in benefits, equity, and the time it takes to find someone with the right mix of engineering depth and business sense. For most growing companies, that math doesn't work.
But you don't need to hire one. You need to find a partner who already works that way.
What working like a forward deployed engineer actually means
Most software vendors take a brief, build what's in it, and deliver. If the brief was slightly wrong, or if something got lost between "what the business actually needs" and "what ended up in the spec," that becomes clear after the work is done. The vendor did what they were asked. The result doesn't quite fit. This happens more often than anyone likes to admit, and it's expensive every time.
A partner working in the FDE model does something different. They stay close to the problem throughout the work, not just at the start. They ask questions that surface the real requirements, not just the stated ones. They notice when what's being built is drifting from what's actually needed, and they say something before it's too late to change. They understand enough about the business context to have an opinion, not just to follow instructions.
This isn't a personality trait. It's a way of structuring the whole engagement.
How to tell whether a partner actually works this way
Most agencies will describe themselves as collaborative and client-focused. What you want are signals, not claims.
Ask what happens when requirements change mid-project. A vendor working from a fixed spec will walk you through their change request process. A partner working in the FDE model will tell you how they catch misalignments early, and what the conversation looks like when direction needs to shift. The answer tells you how they think about the whole relationship.
Ask them to describe a project that didn't go as planned. What went wrong, how they identified it, and what they did about it. Partners who work closely with clients have these stories and tell them directly. Vendors who operate at arm's length often don't, or they frame every problem as something outside their control.
Notice how much they ask before proposing anything. A partner genuinely interested in your problem asks a lot in the first conversation. If it's mostly about their capabilities and rates, that's information about how the engagement will go.
Pay attention to whether they push back. A good partner disagrees with you sometimes, not to be difficult, but because they're close enough to the problem to have an informed view. If every conversation ends with "yes, we can do that," be cautious.
Where this shows up earliest
If you want to know whether a partner actually works this way, the earliest place it becomes visible is in how they handle the initial scoping work.
A partner working in the FDE model doesn't take your brief and come back with a proposal. They run a structured process to understand the problem properly before anyone suggests a solution.
They surface requirements you didn't know to articulate, identify risks that aren't obvious yet, and produce something concrete enough for the whole team to align on before development starts.
When I think about why we run a Discovery Workshop before any build, it's exactly this. Not because it's a process step, but because skipping it is how you end up building the wrong thing very well. I've seen what that costs. It's more than the workshop.
How a partner runs that early work tells you most of what you need to know about how they'll run everything else.
The short version
You don't need to hire a forward deployed engineer. You need to find a partner whose default way of working already looks like that: close to the problem, invested in the outcome, willing to say when something isn't right.
Those partners exist. The questions above will help you find them. And if you want to see what that kind of engagement looks like from the first conversation, get in touch.
