Cognition's deployed engineering team focuses on measuring customer outcomes, not just token usage, achieving significant productivity gains with their AI agent, Devin. This involves understanding deep business problems, strategically applying Devin's capabilities, and feeding insights back to product development, fundamentally reshaping the role of a deployed engineer.
Vinoo Ganesh, formerly of Palantir, details how Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) functions as a critical product strategy rather than a sales role. He shares insights from Palantir's Foundry development, emphasizing how FDEs embed with customers to uncover true problems, observe user behavior, define a common linguistic ontology, and build production-ready solutions from temporary fixes, ultimately driving core product leverage.
Pauline Brunet, VP of Forward Deployed Engineering at Cursor, details how FDE drives AI adoption in enterprises. She distinguishes FDE from traditional services, outlines the 'magical unicorn' FDE profile, shares Cursor's project-based co-development approach, and offers best practices for team structure, customer engagement, and measuring ROI.