By Palantir
2 Nov 2020
Brian is a Forward Deployed Software Engineer (FDSE) at Palantir, currently focused on delivering data integration solutions to a US Department of Defense customer. We sat down with Brian to learn about the FDSE role and his day-to-day life at Palantir.
You’re a Forward Deployed Software Engineer. What is that?
A Forward Deployed Software Engineer (FDSE), or “Delta,” is a software engineer who embeds directly with our customers to configure Palantir’s existing software platforms to solve their toughest problems. While a traditional software engineer, or “Dev,” focuses on creating a single capability that can be used for many customers, FDSEs focus on enabling many capabilities for a single customer. We are deployed across many industries and problem domains, so the breadth of projects we tackle is large and always evolving. Since joining Palantir, I’ve had the chance to work across cyber, healthcare, and defense.
Iterating closely with customers across these various industries requires a unique and broad skillset, ranging from software development to data engineering to customer engagement and creative problem-solving. I need to address questions like: “What products are we deploying for this use-case? Why are we deploying them? How will we spin-up workflows that utilize these products to address the customer’s specific needs?” As FDSEs, not only do we need to be able to answer those questions, but we actually implement the solution in collaboration with end-users.