• Kanav Bhatnagar's job title, forward deployed engineer, has been described as the "hottest role in AI."
• He said his job is to be a customer-facing engineer who tailors products for clients.
• Context-switching and communication are important skills for FDEs, he said.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Kanav Bhatnagar, 24, a forward-deployed engineer at Rippling, an HR tech company, who lives and works in New York City. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I got into software development because I wanted to build cool stuff.

Amazon hired me as a software engineer out of college, and it was a big learning opportunity, teaching me the fundamentals of engineering.

But it was a behemoth of a company, and I eventually wanted to work in a smaller environment where I could take more personal ownership over product decisions and learn more on the job.

After 2 ½ years at Amazon, I interviewed at a sales startup called Actively AI, where I landed a role in forward-deployed engineering.

The "FDE" role was popularized by Palantir, and it has been described as the "hottest role in AI." I liked that it combined software engineering with understanding business.

I spent roughly six months at Actively AI before I joined the AI-forward HR tech company Rippling as a senior FDE, in October 2025.

I've now been an FDE for roughly a year. Put simply, I'm a customer-facing engineer who tailors our product to each client. They describe their challenges and needs, and I build solutions and customizations.

Here's what my day-to-day is like, and the skills you need to break into this role.

My primary job is listening to customers. The results are very rewarding.

Software engineers can feel far removed from customers, because they often can't see their impact. In this job, I'm closer to the front lines.

A core software engineer can build something that serves the majority of use cases, but AI tools usually need more customization to work properly than regular software features. That's when an FDE steps in.

For example, a restaurant chain might have a labor-intensive process for tracking their payroll data that involves spreadsheets and manual data entry, which I'd help them to eliminate within Rippling's platform by using custom code and AI.

My primary job is listening to customers and understanding their problems, which was a learning curve for me, coming from a software engineering background. On a day-to-day basis, I'm in a lot of customer meetings, including visiting businesses who use our product to talk with employees about their experience with it. I probably spend an equal amount of time coding solutions and interacting with our core product teams.

Context-switching is an important skill to master in this job, where you could go from talking to a customer to debugging something to jumping onto another customer call shortly after.

I don't rely on an engineer to code something for me. I make a lot of decisions about the shape of the product and how to execute on it, which I really enjoy. It's very rewarding when a customer looks at what I've built after multiple iterations and says, "This is exactly what I wanted."

Technical and communication skills are equally important as an FDE

I think it would be pretty hard, although not impossible, to become an FDE without a technical background. With the dawn of vibe coding, it might become easier, though.

In my experience, FDE interviews feature technical rounds that test your coding skills, like in traditional software engineering interviews. You also have to show you can talk with any customer, including non-technical people, by asking the right questions to understand a customer's problem, and talk through how you'd design the solution.

To prepare for interviews, I have used consulting industry interview questions, which require you to explain how you'd meet client requests. I think both fields overlap, requiring rapid diagnosis, clarifying questions, and a clear plan of action.

There's probably more breadth than depth of technical knowledge required. In today's age of rapidly evolving technology, I try to spend time outside of work understanding what's new in the AI world and what new AI tools I can be using in my workflow by talking to colleagues and researching online.

I think my job is preparing me to be a founder one day

I'm interested in founding my own company one day, and I've previously heard someone describing the FDE role as a founder bootcamp. It provides a good foundational layer for entrepreneurship, helping you understand how a business functions from the sales process to how to build things.

The FDE role is evolving and no one really knows what direction it's heading in. Even if AI turns out to be unprofitable, I think FDEs will still have a place because of the demand for customer software. Products are becoming easier to build, and people in this role will be needed to handle large contracts with clients.

Palantir is an example of a company that's had FDEs since the 2010s, even before AI was mainstream.

• A version of this story originally appeared in the BI Tech Memo newsletter.
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A few Fridays ago, I was feeling smug. I'd just sent another Tech Memo edition telling subscribers to stop worrying about AI eating tech jobs because Anthropic, the leading AI company pushing this narrative, is hiring so many engineers.

So clever! Until I got an email from a reader, Kiran Maya Sheikh. She has a computer science degree from the University of California, Irvine. It's a great school, and she graduated with an impressive GPA. And yet, she's struggling to land that all-important first full-time software engineering job.

"It's bad advice to 'not worry,'" she wrote. "AI is causing disruption in this job market. Employers are prioritizing hiring experienced workers, but not new graduates."

This week, I interviewed Kiran for Tech Memo. It was an eye-opening view into the realities of the new AI economy. Here are the highlights from our chat, edited for clarity and length.

Alistair: What did you think you were signing up for when you first chose computer science as a degree?

Kiran: After getting into UC Irvine in 2020, I took my first coding class and I really enjoyed it. The prospects at this time were that people were going into this major to get great jobs and it was very rewarding and I ended up liking the work.

What did you believe a career in computer science would give you financially, socially, and emotionally?

The dream at the time was definitely everyone was saying, "Let's go work for Google and the FAANG companies and get a six-figure salary." My motivation was just getting a stable job, getting enough money to take care of my family — what everyone wants. I expected that computer science would put me in a position to grow as a software engineer, first and foremost, and then maybe take me to more of the strategic side, the management side. The main thing that I did figure out was that I wanted financial stability and maybe financial independence as well.

Fast forward to late 2022, when ChatGPT launched. Did you see that as a tool at the time or a threat?

I was a hater at the beginning. Then, friends of mine started using ChatGPT and they're like, "Oh, you can just use it like Google. You can just text it and it'll give you the answer." And honestly, my first thought was like, "That's a bit lazy. You can get more learning out of doing the work yourself." But the more time went on, the more that people were using it, and they started using it for class. Suddenly, I was ahead in class. I was doing the assignments well and understanding more.

Was there a moment when you thought generative AI might reduce the need for junior engineers, or do you even believe that?

We all know the current job market. It's not too hot and a lot of companies are citing AI as part of the reason for layoffs — but maybe that they were going to cut those jobs anyway. At the time though, while I was in school and using ChatGPT, I honestly didn't think it would get this far. I expected AI would be integrated into software engineers' work and companies would start integrating it, but I didn't realize there would be potential for it to take over jobs that I was looking for.

I don't think I was very attentive to the job market situation at the time, and I wasn't really thinking that far ahead. More of my worries at the time were just getting that first entry-level position. And I just thought it would be simple: I just get my degree and I would find a company that's hiring. Looking back, it was my mistake to not really research the current job market and maybe what some people were predicting about AI.

I didn't see it coming either. Few people did. Anyway, describe the moment when you realized the job market had changed?

I was already graduating, so this was after June 2025. I was getting into the reality of having to find my first job, and that's when I definitely started noticing something was wrong. A lot of my classmates, I haven't really heard of them getting any opportunities. Everyone's submitting so many resumes and there's a race to use AI to enhance resumes and send them out as fast as you can. And it seemed a lot more intense than I was prepared for.

A lot of my classmates and even students I know who are still in school are not even landing internships right now. It's not looking great. It's a very tough battle right now. So many people are quitting or getting fired or pivoting and there's new grads. Everyone is bracing, and it's a bloodbath right now.

Do you feel like you're competing against AI or laid-off senior engineers or both, or something else?

My fight is definitely with AI and all the competition with entry-level graduates — especially because AI is known to take over more junior roles. So it's important that we stay more relevant and offer something that AI can't. Scrolling through LinkedIn and on my job portals, I see more offers for mid-level positions, but I don't see as many for entry-level roles. So it's like I'm fighting AI and all these other graduates for roles that don't exist yet.

This job search so far, what has it done to your confidence?

I try to be optimistic. I am lucky to have a better situation than some other people do. I'm living at home with family, so I don't have to worry as much about expenses. Still, if I weren't doing anything about my situation, I would feel pretty bummed. I'd feel kind of trapped.

But I've been trying to work on building my network, finding people I know and learning from other people, just finding communities to be involved with. That's really helped my confidence because I find professionals that are trying to help — they are aware of the job market and they know how hard it is to get that first job. The one saving grace in this tough situation is definitely the community I've found and the people I know who are helping me through it.

Did you ever question your decision to study computer science?

Yes, I did question it. But I remember that I do like computer science and I did like what I learned. I really enjoyed my classes and programming. And instead of turning to a new discipline, I think I prefer to just specialize and find out new information and stay ahead of the news. And like I said, offer something that AI can't.

Do you feel like you were trained for a version of the tech industry that no longer exists?

I am a little salty, about this, if that's the right word. During my time at school, a lot of what the degree was about was learning the basics of software engineering. You learn programming languages and you learn how to set up your development and deployment. But right now there are so many more tools and I think that's the constant thing with the software engineering and the tech industry. There's always new technology and there's a lot of learning you have to keep up with.

But with AI in particular, I felt like I graduated a bit too early. Because now AI will probably be more integrated into learning. I had so many professors that were more welcoming towards AI. I remember a really cool professor who shared a website that would let you make your own LLM. And it's really useful stuff, but it wasn't part of the curriculum. It will be now, but I won't be there to see that change.

What I'm doing to help with that, and make the amends, is volunteering and doing more work on the side that involves newer technologies to just stay fresh and relevant and use all these new AI tools and see how I can leverage it.

If a high school senior asked you today whether they should major in computer science, what would you tell them?

It depends on what interests them about computer science. If it's absolutely something they're interested, they love learning about the technology and they want to code, I would still say go for it, but I would recommend how to position yourself for after college.

You need to start much earlier now, networking and knowing how to speak with people and how to apply, how to write a resume. And those all are also much more important now at the start of college, especially getting internships, if at all possible.

So, I would definitely recommend studying computer science, but being realistic about the opportunities available and keeping up with the news and the job market.

What would you say to potential employers out there?

The focus should still be in hiring entry-level talent if possible. I know it's tough with the current market and the economy and what's going on in the world right now. But entry-level talent is still important because you need to build this generation of professionals so that the future will have people to rely on. AI is still uncertain right now. People are still figuring out how it is impactful and it doesn't help to just force it upon your company.

Sign up for BI's Tech Memo newsletter here. Reach out to me via email at abarr@businessinsider.com.