How Forward Deployed Engineering is done at Ramp — Leo Mehr
Summary
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
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
Technical details
-
FDE Pipeline Automation
The process involves automating stages like request intake, which was demonstrated using Notion agents. This system goes beyond simple processing by conducting multiple rounds of back-and-forth questioning with the submitter until a detailed specification is ready.
-
Agent Development Infrastructure
Building scalable AI pipelines requires an 'agent harness' and rigorous validation processes, including evals, rubrics, and human feedback loops, to ensure output quality at each stage.
-
Scope Validation Failure
450s
A critical lesson learned was the importance of validating basic assumptions (e.g., mobile platform requirements) early in the process to prevent wasted effort after significant development time has been invested.
Mentioned resources
Channel & topics
Watch on YouTube · Back to latest
This independent, AI-assisted summary is provided for commentary and informational purposes. It may contain errors or omit important context. Please watch the original video for the creator's complete presentation. Video, thumbnail, and related copyrights belong to their respective owners.