Job Search Retro: Founding Forward Deployed Engineer

Daniel landed a founding FDE role at a seed stage AI startup.

Hedgy Member Background

• About to graduate from the National University of Singapore. Utilized their NOC (NUS Overseas Colleges) program to complete a one year internship at an early stage startup.
• Was looking to join a startup as a founding forward deployed engineer.
• Interviewed with nine companies through Hedgy and is joining one later this summer.

Key Insights

The internship model most US students have never heard of

• The NUS Overseas Colleges (NOC) program places students at startups for a full year. A different model than the two or three month internships most US students do. Daniel joined his startup as an early solutions architect.
• While the role was originally scoped down for the yearlong internship, within three weeks it had expanded beyond that of an intern because of the growth the company was experiencing. This would give him a depth of experiences that would be critical in behavioral interviews for full-time roles.

FDE interviews test the thing the job actually requires

• The best processes Daniel went through collapsed technical and client-facing skills into a single exercise. One onsite had him building a live agent on their platform against real customer requirements. While it required some technical know-how (AI tools were encouraged), it mainly allowed him to think about tradeoffs and communicate them clearly.
• Most interview sessions were behavioral, not technical coding challenges (i.e. LeetCode). The question that came up most: what do you do when a customer brings conflicting requirements? His approach: ask more questions, understand timelines, pull in feedback from other functions (sales and leadership), and know when to push back. That judgment is what FDE interviewers are actually testing for.

Use an offer in hand to push yourself to know what you really want, not a safety net

• Daniel had a return offer from an internship he loved. It had grown as a business significantly but so had its headcount. He’d be returning to a meaningfully different place.
• To decide on whether to pass up the return offer, he asked himself a simpler question: does this new opportunity remind me of what my internship company felt like when I first joined? It did.

This post is part of our job search retro series where Hedgy members who have recently started a new job share learnings from their search. If we can be helpful as you navigate your search, email us at founders@hedgy.works