Forward Deployed Engineering for building AI Agents
Forward Deployed Engineering Playbook
AI agents delivers an outcome by coordinating across many tools whereas traditional product categories are single-tool boxes. Think of a healthcare intake agent. It captures a referral, reads EHR notes and orders, checks eligibility and prior authorization with payers, assembles required documentation, schedules the patient, gets consents, sends reminders, and updates both the EHR and billing—end to end. The value is a resolved intake: “patient scheduled with auth in place, docs filed, denial risk reduced.” Agent does the whole work end-to-end delivering an outcome. Users don't live in the UI trying to push workflows forward. It is almost like a self-driving car that does the whole journey end-to-end (AI Agents) vs a navigation system in the car that only guides you (traditional software).
Therefore AI Agents don't map into an incumbent product category. In order to grow business, you must do product discovery from inside the enterprise with domain experts as well as rapid prototyping with deployed engineers.
FDE program isn’t just a sales tactic; it’s how you 1. Discover the real product, 2. Prove ROI fast, and finally 3. Convert that into bigger, outcome-priced contracts and reusable “agent core” IP.
This is a two-role operating system: - Echo (embedded analysts / “heretics”): insiders who know the domain and want to change it. - Delta (deployed engineers): Prototype under pain & time pressure; throwaway is acceptable.
Other defining characteristics of an FDE program engagement are... - Contract value is continously pushed up by the FDE team uncovering more use-cases and value. - Prototyping is used heavily to inspire or reveal "real user desire".
Ultimately FDE is about doing things that don't scale and turning them into scalable methods and assets that you improve as you go along. e.g. applying the same assets and solutions in other customers.
FDE talk from Bob McGrew (Check it out: FDE talk from Bob McGrew) really resonated with me as it aligns well with my earlier "Frontier Labs" initative at Microsoft Digital Natives org which was mostly about working with customer product as well as engineering managers to inspire them with quick but functional prototypes that demonstrate the potential and value with a product-led approach.
- Ozgur Istanbul, September 11th 2025