How Forward Deployed Engineering is done at Ramp — Leo Mehr
The talk outlines two core principles for Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE): always scoping and scaling with tokens. FDE teams must resist the urge to simply say 'yes' to every request; instead, they must rigorously scope requirements by asking context-gathering questions to ensure the right product is built. To scale this function, the entire FDE pipeline—from initial intake to spec writing—must be automated using AI agents (scaling with tokens). This requires building robust agent harnesses and implementing validation loops using evals, rubrics, and human feedback.
Key takeaways
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Always Scope First
5:16
FDEs must pause before accepting urgent requests (e.g., SAP S/4HANA integrations) to gather context and determine what is truly necessary for the customer's success, rather than simply fulfilling the immediate ask.
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Scale with Tokens
8:24
The future of FDE requires automating every stage of the request lifecycle—from gathering context to writing a spec—by replacing manual work with AI agents and model capabilities.
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Hybrid Approach is Key
Effective modern FDE needs both human judgment (for taste and final validation) and agent volume/automation to handle the sheer scale of incoming requests.