The Latest Buzz: The “FDE”
Building at the forefront of
technology and insurance.
Walk into any Y Combinator demo day or Silicon Valley pitch meeting right now, and you’ll hear a lot of buzz around the Forward Deployed Engineer (“FDE”). In the past three years, right as generative AI has exploded, more than 100 YC companies have adopted the FDE model. The concept is being hailed as the secret weapon for fast-moving tech startups.
Here’s the funny part: our team at Agent Vista has been deploying this model for more than 15 years.
What Is a Forward Deployed Engineer?
Bob McGrew, former early engineer at PayPal, longtime Palantir executive, and now Chief Research Officer at OpenAI, is widely credited as one of the pioneers of the Forward Deployed Engineer model. He describes the role as:
“An engineer embedded directly with the customer, living in their workflows, and bridging the gap between what the technology product does and what the customer actually needs.”
And this isn’t just a technical curiosity…it’s a market signal.
The surge in Forward Deployed Engineer roles shows that even in the age of AI, proximity still wins. The closer your builders are to the customer, the faster you learn, the better you adapt, and the more value you create. It’s a reminder that no matter how advanced the technology becomes, progress still depends on understanding people.
Our Flavor of FDE at Agent Vista
My first exposure to what we now call the Forward Deployed Engineer model came long before the term existed. Back in the early 2000s at Agencyport, I spent months embedded inside insurance carriers like Arbella, sitting alongside underwriters, understanding their daily pain points, and helping design tools and workflows that made their jobs easier.
Later at AP Intego, we applied that same embedded mindset to the agency side. We were the agency, building software hand in hand with sales and service teams who used it every day. Those experiences deeply shaped how we think about technology deployment at Agent Vista today.
By embedding directly with our users and observing their workflows firsthand through regular shadowing and daily collaboration, our engineers gain the kind of contextual understanding that traditional development approaches miss.
This immersive methodology enables us to design targeted solutions with laser focus on real user needs. Through continuous user interviews and rapid feedback incorporation, we ensure our solutions achieve high adoption rates and genuinely solve business problems rather than creating new ones.
In today’s AI-driven landscape, many organizations rush to deploy technology without considering user impact or workflow integration. That often results in poor adoption and unintended consequences. We take a different approach. Our engineers leverage AI strategically while maintaining human-centered design principles. The goal is to enhance, not disrupt, existing workflows and create solutions that people actually want to use.
The FDE model transforms technology from a disruptive force into an enabling one, bridging the gap between what’s technically possible and what’s practically valuable.
At Agent Vista, that philosophy shapes everything we build:
On the ground, not just in the cloud. We believe in in-person collaboration between engineers, product, and agency staff.
Feedback at the speed of trust. By working together daily, we spot friction points instantly and ship better fixes, faster.
AI agents working for human agents. Our engineers aren’t replacing staff—they’re building AI tools that offload the mundane so people can focus on clients, growth, and relationships.
This is how we’re building AI-enabled agencies: through deliberate, daily collaboration between engineers and the people who know the work best.
Why This Matters for Agency Owners
If you’re an agency owner, here’s the upshot:
The gap between agencies that adopt AI-enabled workflows and those that don’t will widen quickly.
You don’t need to speak “AI engineer” fluently. That’s our job. What you need is a partner who knows your business and knows how to deploy technology that actually fits.
At Agent Vista, we’re bringing innovative solutions, like Forward Deployed Engineers, into the world of insurance.
- Pradeep Namepally, Head of Technology
