Staging environment

The Skills Companies Look For When Hiring FDEs

Hosted by Aishwarya & Arvind and Phani Kolanuvada

670 students

In this video

What you'll learn

Understand what FDEs ship

See what deploying enterprise AI with customers actually involves, from ambiguity to production outcomes.

Decode the real FDE hiring bar

Learn the technical depth, customer instinct, and delivery speed companies evaluate in FDE interviews.

Chart a realistic FDE career arc

Explore paths for new graduates and experienced engineers moving into forward deployed engineering.

Why this topic matters

Forward Deployed Engineers turn promising AI technology into customer outcomes. Learn what the role looks like in practice, why it is becoming essential to enterprise AI adoption, and how to build the blend of technical depth, customer instinct, and delivery speed that companies hire for.

You'll learn from

Aishwarya & Arvind

AI Engineers | Building & Teaching @ The Gen Academy

Aishwarya Srinivasan is the co-founder of The Gen Academy and one of the world's most recognized AI educators, with a community of over 1.2 million AI professionals across social platforms. Previously, she led AI Developer Relations at Fireworks AI and spent over a decade building AI products and ecosystems at Google, Microsoft, and IBM. She holds a Master's in Data Science from Columbia University.


Arvind Narayanamurthy is the Co-founder of The Gen Academy, Previously AI Solutions Architect at Ema, and Founder of Eikos Health. He has built and deployed enterprise AI systems across Microsoft, IBM, Adobe, and high-growth startups, leading initiatives that translated machine learning into measurable business impact. Arvind holds a Master's degree from Carnegie Mellon University.

Phani Kolanuvada

Senior Director of Forward Deployed Engineering @ Salesforce

Phani Kolanuvada is a Senior Director of Forward Deployed Engineering at Salesforce and was one of the founding members of its FDE organization. He helped build the function during the GenAI transformation, growing it from a handful of engineers to several hundred FDEs working directly with customers to deploy enterprise AI at scale. He brings a firsthand perspective on what FDEs ship, how the role differs from software engineering, professional services, and solution architecture, and what companies look for when hiring FDE talent.

See all products from Aishwarya Srinivasan & Arvind Narayan

Go deeper with a course

Mastering Agentic AI: Certification by The Gen Academy
Aishwarya Srinivasan and Arvind Narayanamurthy
View syllabus