Guides for shipping production AI
What a forward deployed engineer actually does, how to hire one, and the architecture decisions we make inside customer repos.
- Guide / Reliability
AI agent idempotency test plan
A safe retry is a proven system property. It is not an instruction asking the agent to remember what it already did.
September 7, 2026
- Guide / Delivery
Six-week production AI delivery plan
Six weeks is enough to ship one bounded AI workflow when each week produces working evidence and the customer owns the environment, decisions, and handoff.
September 3, 2026
- Guide / Operations
Production AI incident response runbook
An AI incident is an operating event. The first job is to reduce impact, preserve evidence, and restore a safe service state.
September 1, 2026
- Guide / Operations
AI use case prioritization matrix
Choose the first AI workflow by evidence of value and executional fit, not by the most compelling demo.
August 27, 2026
- Guide / Operations
AI pilot to production readiness checklist
A successful demo is evidence that an idea may work. Production readiness is evidence that the business can operate it safely, measure it, and recover when it fails.
August 25, 2026
- Guide / Compensation
Forward deployed engineer salary
What companies pay for a forward deployed engineer — in-house at Palantir and OpenAI, in the broader market, and via a fixed-fee embed when a $400k headcount is the wrong instrument.
August 24, 2026
- Guide / Hiring
Forward deployed engineer skills
The skills that separate a forward deployed engineer from a strong staff engineer — and a practical checklist for screening them.
August 17, 2026
- Guide / Comparison
Forward deployed engineer vs. solutions engineer
Solutions engineers exist to close software. Forward deployed engineers exist to put that software — or a custom workflow on top of it — into production on the customer's stack.
August 10, 2026
- Guide / Comparison
Forward deployed engineer vs. staff augmentation
Staff augmentation fills a seat. A forward deployed engineer ships a defined production outcome, then hands the system to your team.
August 3, 2026
- Guide / Role
Palantir forward deployed engineer
The Palantir forward deployed engineer is the original version of the role: a product-caliber engineer living inside the customer, measured by whether Gotham (or the follow-on workflow) actually runs.
July 27, 2026
- Guide / Hiring
Forward deployed engineer hiring guide
How CTOs and VPs of Engineering vet, interview, and hire forward deployed engineers — with a job description template, interview questions, and a decision framework.
June 18, 2026
- Guide / Architecture
RAG vs. fine-tuning for enterprise AI
A technical comparison of retrieval-augmented generation and model fine-tuning — cost, data privacy, accuracy, and the decision framework we use when scoping enterprise AI engagements.
June 18, 2026
- Guide / Definition
What is a forward deployed engineer?
The role Palantir invented in 2003 that OpenAI, Anthropic, and Databricks now rely on to ship production AI inside customer organizations.
June 18, 2026