America | Tech | Opinion | Culture | Charts
Today we’re introducing the a16z FDE Fellowship - an 8-week cohort for FDEs and Applied AI leaders at the forefront of deploying AI into real-world enterprises.
Demand for FDEs is growing rapidly as startups race to close the gap between what customers need and what AI agents can deliver. But best-in-class FDEs are rare and hard to reach. They’re siloed, scattered, and heads down with their customers.
We’re launching this fellowship to bring together the people at the center of this shift to share what’s working, level up, and define the future of forward-deployed engineering.
Applications have now closed - but sign up below to hear when the next cohort starts.
How it works
8 weeks long
Starts in July 2026
Time commitment is flexible, all opt-in
What you’ll get
Tight network of FDEs and Applied AI leaders at the fastest-growing companies in the world
In-person dinner series in SF (and more cities, by demand)
Unfiltered learnings from the field
Who you’ll be joining
You’ll break bread with founding fellows and industry leaders like:
Perry Ha - VP, Agent Product at Decagon
Senta Knuth - Enterprise Product Deployment at ElevenLabs
Rohan Chandra - Regional Director, AI Deployment at Cursor
Conor Murphy - Director, AI Forward Deployed Engineering at Databricks
Niko Grupen - Head of Applied Research at Harvey
Gene Karshenboym - Director of Engineering, Operations and Strategy at Google, prev CEO at Phiar
Luv Kothari - GM, AI FDE at Snowflake, prev VP Product at Scale
Barry McCardel - Cofounder & CEO at Hex, prev Forward Deployed at Palantir
Leo Mehr - Director of Engineering at Ramp
Kevin Bai - Founding FDE at Rippling, prev FDE Lead at Palantir
Isa Gomez - Technical Deployment Lead at OpenAI, prev Deployment Strategist Enterprise Lead at Palantir
… and many more.
The rising need for FDEs
Since the FDE role originated in the early 2010s at Palantir, it’s become one of the hottest jobs in tech. The original insight was simple: building great enterprise software requires deep customer alignment.
Today, the FDE role has emerged as the critical enabler for agentic platforms. We’re still uncovering the blueprint for the AI-native enterprise, and the teams closest to customers are the ones drawing it. That same proximity is what makes agentic products successful. Agents are only as sophisticated as the context and workflows they can reach, which demands real immersion in customer operations.
For AI-native products, the work happening in the field right now isn’t just deployment - it’s R&D. FDEs are at the frontlines, engaging with the customer to discover, integrate, and build under tight timelines and with emerging expectations for highly-personalized software.
The best FDEs combine technical depth and customer empathy to navigate complex enterprise orgs, earn stakeholders’ trust, and deliver measurable outcomes.
We’re launching this fellowship to give these FDEs a space to trade stories, pressure-test ideas, and develop the playbooks this moment demands.
We’re looking for fellows who:
Are deploying new AI products and systems into enterprise orgs to make a meaningful, measurable dent in the business
Think in scalable systems, not just individual features
Combine technical depth with product intuition, exceptional communication, and real passion for the craft
You might call yourself an FDE, Applied AI Agent Builder, Director of AI Deployment, or something else entirely. Titles don’t matter - what does is your mindset and approach.
Applications have now closed - but sign up below to hear when the next cohort starts.
Questions? Contact Anna Owens. Thank you!
This newsletter is provided for informational purposes only, and should not be relied upon as legal, business, investment, or tax advice. Furthermore, this content is not investment advice, nor is it intended for use by any investors or prospective investors in any a16z funds. This newsletter may link to other websites or contain other information obtained from third-party sources - a16z has not independently verified nor makes any representations about the current or enduring accuracy of such information. If this content includes third-party advertisements, a16z has not reviewed such advertisements and does not endorse any advertising content or related companies contained therein. Any investments or portfolio companies mentioned, referred to, or described are not representative of all investments in vehicles managed by a16z; visit https://a16z.com/investment-list/ for a full list of investments. Other important information can be found at a16z.com/disclosures. You’re receiving this newsletter since you opted in earlier; if you would like to opt out of future newsletters you may unsubscribe immediately.
I’m setting up a small FDE group chat.
Looking for:
- 1 Palantir FDE
- 2 AI lab FDEs (Anthropic, OpenAI, etc.)
- 2 other FDE-style builders (ElevenLabs, HappyRobot, etc.)
We’ll run 3 sessions on:
- 1. Backpropagated Product Development
- 2. The Semantic Layer Solution
- 3. Indexing Token Caches
Hmu 😘
- X (@fdejoe123)
- email (fdejoe123@gmail.com)
This announcement captured something important early: in AI-native companies, forward deployment is not just delivery. It is also R&D.
The best FDEs do more than close the gap for one customer. They uncover patterns in real workflows, turn those lessons into reusable product capabilities, and make every future deployment faster and more reliable. Without that feedback loop, the work risks becoming bespoke consulting, however fashionable the title may be.
Creating a space where practitioners can compare what is working, pressure-test ideas, and develop the playbooks together is exactly what this still-emerging field needs.
I recently published a practical guide exploring this same operating model, from discovery and evals to enterprise deployment and turning customer-specific “gravel roads” into scalable product highways:
Forward Deployed AI Engineering
https://www.amazon.com/Forward-Deployed-AI-Engineering-Software/dp/B0H3VKKG38/