Forward Deployed Software Engineer, New Grad - Commercial
The Forward Deployed Engineer, New Grad
Forward Deployed Engineering is a radical commitment to the outcome. This is Palantir’s operating ethos. We represent a departure from the traditional software delivery paradigm, which hinges on selling prepackaged solutions and doing what is minimally viable to accrue revenue.
From hospital to factory floors, Forward Deployed Engineers (FDEs) embed themselves in the customer’s reality fully, until the problem is theirs. This requires walking many miles in a customer’s shoes, having the agency to build past the perimeter of what a product currently offers, and deviating from every existing formula to win. It requires delivering real outcomes.
FDEs do not operate within the product’s existing boundaries. They push past them, rewrite them, or discard them entirely — because the playbook is irrelevant if it doesn’t win.
You are allowed expected to use your agency.
You are allowed expected to respect the problem.
You are allowed expected to run towards the fire.
As a New Grad, you will be entrusted with responsibility on day 1. You will not be handed a ticket queue. You will not be shielded from the customer, the chaos, or the consequences. FDEs are entrusted with real ownership, operating with real autonomy, and held to a real standard, no matter their tenure.
The work is difficult. The stakes are not simulated. You will work in small, high-trust teams and own projects end-to-end, from the first conversation with a customer to shipping the product that changes how they operate:
- Sitting alongside engineers to make architecture and design decisions
- Wrestling with data at a scale that breaks assumptions and demands invention
- Building custom applications, LLM workflows, and production solutions engineered for a specific customer's reality, not a generic use case
- Owning relationships with stakeholders from the users in the weeds to the executives making the calls