Roadmap · Career
Forward deployed and solutions engineering (Solutions engineer)
Opens with creditsFor software engineers and students who like people and messy real problems as much as code, and want a customer-facing engineering role: forward deployed engineer, solutions engineer or sales engineer. By the end you can run discovery, integrate with a customer's systems, prototype and demo fast, deploy AI on real customer data, write for non-engineers and plan a realistic way into the role.
Curated by Tauseef Fayyaz10 stages, 63 topics~9 months at a few hours a weekBy the end, you will be able to
- Explain how forward deployed, solutions and sales engineering differ in timing, output, coding and pressure, and read any posting to see which job it really is
- Run a discovery conversation that uncovers the business problem, the people involved, the data and written success criteria
- Build a working integration with authentication, webhooks, retries and data mapping, and check it against a go-live checklist
- Prototype and demo a solution on realistic data, including a RAG or agent workflow with evaluations and guardrails
- Publish a deployment case study, practise discovery and demos out loud, and plan a route in through postings, internal moves or bridge roles
The path
10 stages, in the order to learn them. Open one to start.
1The roles comparedWhat forward deployed, solutions and sales engineers actually do, when they work in the customer journey, how they are measured, and why demand for the forward deployed role has grown so fast with AI.7 topics · ~2 weeks
- 1What a forward deployed engineer doesA forward deployed engineer (FDE) is a software engineer who works inside a customer's organisation and builds working software on the customer's own systems…
- 2What a solutions engineer doesA solutions engineer designs how a customer will adopt a product.
- 3What a sales engineer doesA sales engineer, also called a presales engineer, is the technical partner of an account executive, the salesperson who owns a deal.
- 4Comparing timing, output and pressureThe three roles overlap, so compare them on four things.
- 5Why demand grew with AILanguage models are powerful but rarely useful to a large company straight away.
- 6Adjacent roles that lead inSeveral roles sit next to these three and build the same skills.
- 7Testing your fitThese roles suit people who enjoy strangers, ambiguity and switching context, and who get energy from seeing someone use what they built.
7 in this stageOpen this stage2Core engineering you still needThe engineering base customer-facing roles depend on: one fast scripting language, SQL on unfamiliar data, HTTP, Git in someone else's repository, cloud basics and a calm method for debugging systems you did not build.6 topics · ~6 weeks
- 1One language you are fast inCustomer work is mostly glue: moving data between systems, calling APIs, wrapping a model, cleaning a messy export.
- 2SQL on someone else's dataMost customer problems live in their data, often in a warehouse such as Snowflake, BigQuery or Redshift.
- 3HTTP, REST and reading a failed requestNearly every integration speaks HTTP.
- 4Git and code review in a customer's repositoryAt a customer you work inside their repository, with their branching rules, reviewers, tests and deployment pipeline.
- 5Cloud basics: deploy, secrets, identity and networksEnterprise customers run on AWS, Azure or Google Cloud, and many deployments stall on permissions or networking rather than code.
- 6Debugging systems you did not buildAt a customer you rarely know the system, and people are often watching.
6 in this stageOpen this stage- Discovery and the customer's problemFind the real problem behind the request: prepare a question bank, uncover the business issue and its cost, map the people who decide, watch the real workflow, and agree written success criteria and scope.7 topics · ~3 weeksOpens with credits
- Integrations, APIs and data plumbingConnect a product to a customer's systems safely: authentication, webhooks, rate limits and retries, pagination, data mapping, single sign-on, sandboxes, security review and a go-live checklist.7 topics · ~5 weeksOpens with credits
- Fast prototypes and demosBuild something a customer can see this week and show it well: rapid prototypes, proofs of concept, pilots, a demo structure that starts with the result, a reliable demo environment and recorded demos.7 topics · ~4 weeksOpens with credits
- Writing and presenting to non-engineersGet technical ideas across to executives, users and mixed rooms: answer first, executive summaries, solution design documents, weekly updates, whiteboarding, handling objections and handover documentation.6 topics · ~3 weeksOpens with credits
- AI deployment at a customerPut language models to work on a customer's data and workflows: retrieval, agents and tools, MCP servers, evaluations built from real cases, guardrails, human review and cost and latency at scale.6 topics · ~6 weeksOpens with credits
- Travel, on-site work and pressureWork well inside someone else's organisation: access and etiquette, confidentiality, incidents with the customer watching, escalations, scope creep, saying no with options and a pace you can keep for years.5 topics · ~2 weeksOpens with credits
- Getting into the roleRead postings for the real signals, build a deployment case study, use internal moves and bridge roles, practise discovery and demos out loud, understand what hiring loops test and how pay is structured.6 topics · ~4 weeksOpens with credits
- Growth pathsWhere these roles lead: a senior specialist track, back into product engineering, into product management, leading a field team or founding a company from problems you saw in the field.6 topics · ~2 weeksOpens with credits
8 more stages, 50 more topics, free with an account.
You have seen the open stages of the Forward deployed and solutions engineering roadmap. Every topic it covers is listed above, and an account opens the rest: what each topic means, a question to check yourself, the courses, the practice and Tauseef's advice for every stage. Early access is open: sign up and your account is active shortly after.
Everything here is free to learn from. A few things, like adding a roadmap, keeping a cheat sheet or asking Tauseef a question, use credits. You get 15 when you join, your first roadmap is free, and if you are learning seriously and run out, you can ask for more. Credits only make sure the platform goes to people who are actually learning.
Build a project
A finished project proves more than a certificate.
- Start with this oneintermediate2 semesters · 2 studentsGuarded Text-to-SQL Assistant for Small Business Sales Data
AI on a customer's own data with guardrails, the kind of system you would demo and deploy for a real business
- Python
- LLM API or small open model
- sqlglot
- PostgreSQL
- DuckDB
- intermediate2 semesters · 3 studentsPolicy-Bound Returns and Refunds Agent for Small Online Stores
An agent with tools, policies and human approval, built around a real shop's workflow and success criteria
- Python
- LLM API with tool calling
- Pydantic
- FastAPI
- PostgreSQL
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Cheat sheets
See allWork with me
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