What FDE job descriptions actually ask

We opened 88 live FDE reqs. 30 are first-pod. Here is the phrase count. It is not a market total. Do not add it to anyone else’s tracker.

A skill is counted once per req. Every phrase below appears in a job description opened the same day. No invented skills. Practitioner interviews are not in this note.

Engineering they name

Must-have phrases copied from opened JDs. Document frequency, one count per req.

Phrase	Count / 88
integrations	53
Python	53
LLM	49
AI agents	40
TypeScript	33
production deployments	31
backend	23
full-stack	21
React	19

Judgment they name

Same file. Same rule. This is the column generic SWE prep skips.

Phrase	Count / 88
stakeholders	49
ambiguity	47
customer-facing	46
implementation	38
travel	35
on-site	31
playbook	25
executive stakeholders	24
scoping	18
embedded with customers	14
go-live	6
first 90 days	1

Three first-pod patterns

First-pod = 30 yes / 54 unknown / 4 no. “Yes” only when the title says Founding or the opened JD says first FDE / founding seat / one of the first / writing the playbook.

Pattern A — first seat, no playbook. Tacto, Amari, Sphere, Cape, Airweave, CommodityAI, Warp, Mintlify. You are not joining a motion. You are standing one up.

Pattern B — geographic or org first. Applied Intuition (EMEA / Munich), Meticulous (first FDE in San Francisco), Cape (East Asia). You inherit a product, not a local playbook.

Pattern C — signed deal, nothing live. comstruct, ZoomLogi, Dryft, Warp. Travel, on-site, scoping, go-live.

If you are applying, pick a pattern before you pick a company. The interview will punish a generic SWE story that does not match the pattern.

What they write in the first-pod seats

“You are one of the first FDEs at Tacto, so you are not slotting into a playbook, you are writing it.”
Tacto — Forward Deployed Engineer

“You will be the first FDE on the team, which means you set the bar.”
Amari — Founding Forward Deployed Engineer

“you are the technical face of comstruct - the person who turns a signed deal into a live and working systems for the customer.”
comstruct — Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE)

What an interview would have to test

Public JDs describe the job loop. They almost never describe the interview loop. We did not find a numbered interview sequence on this freeze. Treat the job loop as the spec.

Land inside the account. customer-facing 46, embedded 14, on-site 31, travel 35.
Name the real problem. ambiguity 47, scoping 18.
Build in their environment. integrations 53, implementation 38, production deployments 31.
Move the stakeholder. stakeholders 49, executive stakeholders 24.
Get to live. go-live 6.
Leave something the next hire can use. playbook 25.

Writing production code is assumed (Python 53, TypeScript 33). Writing it in their house, under their constraints, with their people in the room, is the job. A generic leetcode-plus-system-design loop misses the middle of that list.

If your prep is only “I can build an agent,” you are preparing the left column and ignoring the right.

Get the Guide Apply

Sources

Skill map counts: 01-market-intelligence/SKILL-MAP.md, 18 Aug 2026, n = 88. First-pod = 30 yes / 54 unknown / 4 no.
Quotes: SKILL-MAP-QUOTES.md and INTERVIEW-GUIDE-V1.md section 8, each with company + URL, opened 18 Aug 2026.
Freeze: jobs-db.sourced-95.csv — 88 opened rows. Adjacent titles without “Forward Deployed” in the title were not added.

This file uses the opened 88 only. It is not a market total. Do not add this n to any other census.