The AI Forward Deployed Engineer: The Job Every Company Now Needs
Join the AI Forward Deployed Engineering cohort (live, starts November 14): https://maven.com/rajat-dandekar/ai-fde-cohort Use code FDECODE for 20% off (valid till 10th October) ************************** Most AI projects look great in the demo and fall apart in the pilot. In this lightning lesson, Dr. Rajat Dandekar (co-founder, Vizuara) explains why that happens, and what kind of engineer companies need to get AI from a demo into production: the AI Forward Deployed Engineer (AI FDE). The examples come from real enterprise engagements. What you will learn: (1) Four ways an AI pilot breaks, and why it is rarely the model's fault (2) The five kinds of "fog" that land on an FDE's desk: architecture, models and serving, infra and security, scope, and evaluation (3) The five traits of a strong AI FDE (4) Where the role came from (Palantir's deployed engineers) and why demand is rising (5) A six-step roadmap: think from first principles, teach it, master the 80/20 toolkit (LLMs, RAG, SLMs, agents), get evals right, speak production, and stay plastic (6) Why you should report facts, not feelings, to a client Chapters 00:00 Introduction 04:24 Why AI demos die in the pilot 06:26 Four ways a pilot breaks 14:00 Everyone wants AI 16:48 A week in the fog: five kinds of client questions 24:48 Someone to guide them 25:43 The five traits of an AI FDE 28:36 Where the role came from 30:29 A highly coveted role 32:25 The six-step journey 33:05 Step 1: Think from first principles 34:48 Step 2: Teach it 35:56 Step 3: The 80/20 toolkit 37:17 Step 4: Evals 38:57 Step 5: Speak production and model economics 40:15 Step 6: Stay plastic 42:29 Report the facts, not your feelings 43:55 Recap: why the pilot failed 45:37 The AI FDE bootcamp 47:50 The curriculum, module by module 50:02 The capstone 51:21 Who teaches it and the details 51:42 Promo code FDECODE About Vizuara Vizuara AI Labs makes AI accessible for all: depth-first AI education, research programs and enterprise AI work, built by PhDs from MIT, Purdue and IIT Madras. https://vizuara.ai