Turn your engineers into Forward Deployed Engineers
The corporate training program built on 10,000+ hours of training AI engineers in person. We train your team to do more than build: run discovery with executives, codify success criteria, and ship under real stakeholder pressure.
What is a Forward Deployed Engineer?
The fastest-growing role in AI isn't a research position. It's the engineer who turns a capable model into a deployed solution inside the customer's business.
Owns the full arc
An FDE uncovers business pain, quantifies it, secures stakeholder buy-in, prototypes fast, iterates live, and deploys the approved solution. They sit in front of your customers and turn vague problems into shipped software.
Not a title, a method
The scarce skill isn't code, it's discovery, stakeholder management, and delivery under ambiguity. Catalyst FDE gives your existing engineers that discipline, so the capability lives on your team instead of on a hire you have to find.
The role every team is racing to build
AI models work in the demo and stall in the enterprise. The gap is closed by a person, and the market has priced that in.
Year-over-year growth in FDE job postings through early 2026
Up from 5–10% at the start of 2026. Enterprise adoption in under two quarters
Customer discovery and stakeholder management is the fastest-growing requirement in FDE postings, not code
Of roughly 17,000 practicing FDEs, only a fraction have delivered enterprise-grade outcomes
Sources: TechCrunch (July 2026), Perspective AI 2026 FDE hiring analysis, Christian & Timbers
How Gauntlet forges FDEs
In the onsite weeks, your engineers run this full cycle through stakeholder simulations of increasing complexity: role-played discovery, real scope changes mid-build, and human-graded review of every delivery.
Discovery
Step 01
Uncover business pain, quantify the metrics that matter, identify key stakeholders, and begin defining success criteria.
Codify Success Criteria
Step 02
Document the problem statement and secure customer buy-in on the direction before a line of code is written.
Build the Prototype
Step 03
Ship a working prototype against the codified success criteria, fast, and grounded in what the stakeholder actually agreed to.
Present Live
Step 04
Demo the prototype to the stakeholder and take feedback in the room, credible in front of a senior audience.
Iterate and Re-Present
Step 05
Incorporate feedback and scope changes, adjust the build, and bring it back for approval.
Deploy
Step 06
Ship the final approved version to production. The cycle ends where your customer's ROI begins.
Send a Team. Get FDEs Back.
Six weeks, one method. Your engineers run the full discovery-to-deploy cycle as FDEs and come back running it on your business.
Catalyst FDE
Your engineers train and ship purely as FDEs, against your company's context.
- Every participant runs the full discovery-to-deploy cycle as an FDE
- Two full stakeholder simulations, human-graded, with your company's context woven in
- 4 weeks of part-time remote prework, then 2 weeks onsite in Austin
- Travel to and from Austin, housing, food, laundry service, and day-to-day logistics covered
- All IP remains owned by your organization
Part-time prework, 8–10 hours per week.
Full-time, on-site at our Austin, TX HQ.
Built around Real World Simulations
No sandbox exercises. Your engineers face live stakeholders who push back, change scope mid-build, and grade every delivery. When they return, the first hard conversation with your customer will not be their first.
What your team comes back with
- Discovery they can run with your executives and your customers
- Scope control practiced against live stakeholders, under pressure
- A delivery bar set by human-graded review, brought back to your roadmap
Build your own FDEs
Your customers' problems stop waiting on a hire. Book a call and we will scope seats for your team in the next training program.
Book a Call