By FDE Interview Prep, a SourceStrongAI company

In this post11 sections
  1. What ‘customer-facing’ means on an FDE posting
  2. What hiring leaders say counts
  3. Where to find customer evidence in your past
  4. Writing it as resume lines: before and after
  5. Answering ‘what customer-facing experience do you have?’
  6. Building the evidence you are missing
  7. Mistakes that read as no experience at all
  8. Prove it in the room
  9. Questions people ask
  10. Keep reading
  11. More from the blog

The postings you’ve been reading keep saying “customer-facing”, and your customers so far have been the team that called your API, or the students in the lab section you ran. So you hover over the apply button and wonder whether you qualify. It depends on the posting. Some ask for years in a customer-facing role, such as Cursor’s US posting. Source 1Forward Deployed EngineerPublisherCursor (Ashby job board)Source typecompany job posting Others say it isn’t necessary: Leo Mehr, Ramp’s director of engineering, wrote in August 2025 that it helps but is not necessary for Ramp’s FDE candidates. Source 2Forward Deployed Engineering (Leo Mehr, Director, Engineering)PublisherRamp Builders (engineering blog)Source typecompany blog Either way, what a reviewer needs is evidence that someone outside your code depended on you, written so they can see it. For the whole document, see the forward deployed engineer resume guide. This post covers one gap: where the evidence hides in your past, how to write it as resume lines, and what to say when a recruiter asks.

What ‘customer-facing’ means on an FDE posting

Start with what the postings say, because some of them mean it literally:

  • As of September 2026, Anthropic’s US and London FDE postings ask for 4+ years in a technical, customer-facing role such as FDE, or as a software engineer with consulting experience, and say former technical founders are encouraged to apply. Source 3Forward Deployed Engineer (New York City, NY; San Francisco, CA; Seattle, WA)PublisherAnthropic (Greenhouse job board)Source typecompany job posting
  • As of September 2026, Cursor’s US FDE posting asks for 2+ years in a customer-facing role, leading discovery conversations and being accountable for customer outcomes. Source 1Forward Deployed EngineerPublisherCursor (Ashby job board)Source typecompany job posting
  • Sarah Khalid, an FDE director at Salesforce, said on Salesforce’s blog in November 2025 that customer-facing skills are very important, because FDEs engage business and executive stakeholders who do not understand technical jargon. Source 4Today's Hottest Role: Forward Deployed EngineerPublisherSalesforce 360 BlogSource typecompany blog

Read those three together and the phrase breaks into parts you can prove separately. Cursor’s line names two: leading discovery (finding out what someone needs) and being accountable for outcomes (answering for the result). Khalid’s names a third: explaining the work to people who don’t speak engineering.

Kevin Bai, speaking at the AI Engineer World’s Fair 2026 in a general view rather than for his employer, put it in one line: someone you would hire as a software engineer who you would also trust in front of a customer. Source 5Forward Deployed Engineering 101 (Kevin Bai, Member of Technical Staff, Anthropic; AI Engineer World's Fair 2026)PublisherAI EngineerSource typerecorded talk or interview

One caveat: when a posting states years in a customer-facing role, a teaching line does not turn into those years. Some postings are written for career FDEs and consultants. Others leave room. As of September 2026, Accenture’s London FDE posting welcomes non-linear profiles and says assessment rests on demonstrated deployment experience and outcome ownership, not “CV pattern matching”. Source 6Forward Deployed Engineer (London, R00339251)PublisherAccenture careers (Workday)Source typecompany job posting Our free lesson on reading an FDE job posting line by line shows how to tell a hard requirement from a preference before you spend an evening on the application.

Here is how the postings and forms in this post compare, checked in the same month:

PostingRoom for you?
Anthropic (US, London)Years required Source 3Forward Deployed Engineer (New York City, NY; San Francisco, CA; Seattle, WA)PublisherAnthropic (Greenhouse job board)Source typecompany job posting
Cursor (US)Years required Source 1Forward Deployed EngineerPublisherCursor (Ashby job board)Source typecompany job posting
Accenture (London)Judged on outcomes Source 6Forward Deployed Engineer (London, R00339251)PublisherAccenture careers (Workday)Source typecompany job posting
ElevenLabsClubs and side projects count Source 7Forward Deployed Engineer - Software Engineer - North America @ ElevenLabsPublisherElevenLabs (Ashby job board)Source typecompany job posting
LangChain early-careerTeaching and leadership count Source 8Application formPublisherLangChain (Ashby job board)Source typecompany job posting

What hiring leaders say counts

When the requirement is soft, several employers and hiring leaders have said in public what they accept instead:

That last one isn’t about customer work, but it matters if you are changing careers. If you spent years as a lab scientist, a nurse or an analyst, you were once the user who suffered through bad software. That is a different kind of evidence from customer evidence: you know the user’s pain because it was yours. It belongs on the page, next to at least one moment where someone depended on you.

Where to find customer evidence in your past

Here is the test we use; it is our method, not something any employer has said it applies. A moment counts as customer evidence when all four are true:

  1. A specific person or group depended on your work.
  2. They would have noticed, and told you, if it went wrong.
  3. You talked to them yourself, not only through tickets.
  4. You can say what changed for them afterwards.

Now go looking, starting with the places you filed under “not real work”:

Where to lookWho the customer was
An internal tool you builtThe support, finance or ops team using it
An incident you ranThe team whose day it broke
A support escalationThe agent you worked the case with
A partner integrationThe other company’s engineers
An open-source projectPeople filing issues and asking for help
Teaching or tutoringThe student who was stuck
A retail, restaurant or sales jobThe person at the counter or on the call
Freelance or a family businessThe owner who paid you
A research labThe researcher who ran your pipeline

For each row that fits, write down the person’s role, what they asked for, what they needed once you dug in, and what happened. If you can’t fill in the last part, it is a weaker candidate; keep looking. Our free lesson on the bridge story turns the strongest one into your “why FDE” answer. This post stays with the resume and the recruiter call.

Writing it as resume lines: before and after

The rule we use: every line names who it was for, what they needed, what you did and how you knew it worked. “Customer-facing” never appears as a skill. It shows up as a person.

The lines below are invented to show the shape. Swap in your own people and your own numbers.

An internal tool.

Before:
Built an internal refunds dashboard
in React and Postgres.

After:
Built the refunds lookup the support
team asked for; sat with agents on
live tickets first, cut the tool to
the 3 fields they used, and handle
time per refund fell from 6 to 2 min.

An incident.

Before:
On-call for the payments service.

After:
Ran the fix for a payout outage that
hit the finance team at month-end;
sent them hourly updates in plain
English and agreed the backfill
order with their controller;
every payout landed before close.

Open source.

Before:
Maintainer of a CSV parsing library.

After:
Maintain a CSV library used by data
teams; triaged 40+ user issues, found
most came from one Excel export quirk,
and shipped a fix plus a guide that
closed them.

A people-facing job plus a public project, the pairing Mehr named. These are two lines in two places. Under the sales job:

Before:
Sales associate, electronics store.

After:
Asked each customer what they used
a laptop for before recommending
one; top seller for returns-free
sales two quarters running.

And under projects:

Built a public spec-comparison tool
from the questions customers asked
most at the store.

Two placement rules. Put these lines under the job they belong to, not in a separate “soft skills” section, where reviewers skim past them. And keep one plain-words sentence at the top of the resume that points at them: “Software engineer who builds tools with the teams that use them.” The line under it has to prove it.

Answering ‘what customer-facing experience do you have?’

Expect the question out loud as well as on the form. One candidate reported, in February 2025, that their recruiter interview for OpenAI’s role asked whether they had customer-facing experience. Source 11OpenAI Forward Deployed Software Engineer (comment by u/aksss123)PublisherReddit r/leetcodeSource typecandidate report on RedditSource 12OpenAI Forward Deployed Software Engineer (comment by u/aksss123)PublisherReddit r/leetcodeSource typecandidate report on RedditSource 13OpenAI Forward Deployed Software Engineer (comment by u/aksss123)PublisherReddit r/leetcodeSource typecandidate report on Reddit

If you have none under a customer title, don’t bluff and don’t apologize. Use this shape, which is ours:

  1. Say it plainly. “Not under a customer-facing title yet.”
  2. Name the closest customer. One person or team, by role.
  3. Give one episode. What they asked for, what they needed, what you did.
  4. Close with the pull. Why you want more of that work. Mehr has called wanting to be closer to customers a great predictor of FDE fit, so say it out loud. Source 9What is a Forward Deployed Engineer? (FDE Explained) feat. Leo Mehr of Ramp (YouTube auto-generated English captions)PublisherdearCC (Clara Shih), YouTubeSource typerecorded talk or interview

Here is how it sounds for a working engineer, with an invented background:

“Not under a customer-facing title yet. The closest is our support team. They asked me for a refunds dashboard, and before building it I sat with their agents on live tickets. What they needed was one lookup, not a dashboard, so I built that, and their handle time dropped. That week was the best part of my year, and it’s why I’m applying for FDE roles instead of another backend job.”

And for a student, also invented:

“Not under a customer-facing title yet. The closest is the intro programming course I TA’d. Students came to office hours saying their code ‘didn’t work’; I learned to ask what they expected first, and I rewrote the setup guide around the three questions I heard most. Office-hours queues got shorter, and I liked that part more than the grading, which is why I’m applying for FDE roles.”

Both work because they are small and true, and the recruiter can write it down. Compare it with the answer on the customer-facing experience question, which is free and lists the follow-ups (“Who else on your side talked to them, and what did you own that they didn’t?”). The same story can also carry your opening: the background-in-a-minute question shows where it fits.

Two lines to avoid. “I’m a people person” gives the recruiter nothing to record. “I managed client relationships” when you sat in on two sales calls fails the first follow-up.

Building the evidence you are missing

If the dig came up empty, build the evidence. Pick one and start this week:

  • Take the calls at your current job. Ask to join customer calls, take a support escalation rotation or shadow a solutions engineer. Write down what the customer asked and what you did about it.
  • Build for one non-engineer. A dues tracker for a club treasurer, a scheduling sheet for a clinic, a report for a shop owner. Keep a log of what they asked for, what you built first and what you changed once they used it. That log is what you talk about in the interview.
  • Teach something. Mentor at a bootcamp, run a study group or answer questions in an open-source project’s issues. Mehr’s point was about people who taught and enjoyed it, so pick something you’d do even if it never went on a resume. Source 2Forward Deployed Engineering (Leo Mehr, Director, Engineering)PublisherRamp Builders (engineering blog)Source typecompany blog
  • Practice the conversation. A resume line gets you the interview, and then you have to handle a customer live. Our free practice case puts you in front of an AI customer with a vague problem and facts they only reveal when you ask. Run the free practice case; it needs a sign-in.

If you are a student, our post on becoming an FDE as a new grad lists who hires at that level. If you are a working engineer, from software engineer to forward deployed engineer covers what transfers and what doesn’t.

Mistakes that read as no experience at all

  • Adjectives instead of people. “Excellent communication skills” names no one and proves nothing. Replace it with one line that names a person by role.
  • Calling every user a customer. “Used by thousands of people” is scale, not customer work. Who did you talk to?
  • Stretching the story. Sitting in on a demo is not owning a relationship. The follow-up about what you owned finds the gap in one question.
  • Hiding the non-technical job. A cashier or sales job is the people-facing work Mehr named. Source 9What is a Forward Deployed Engineer? (FDE Explained) feat. Leo Mehr of Ramp (YouTube auto-generated English captions)PublisherdearCC (Clara Shih), YouTubeSource typerecorded talk or interview Keep it on the page and write it like the example above.
  • Jargon in the customer line. If the line only makes sense to an engineer, it argues against you. Khalid’s point was that stakeholders don’t understand technical jargon, so write for them. Source 4Today's Hottest Role: Forward Deployed EngineerPublisherSalesforce 360 BlogSource typecompany blog
  • Leaving the application form blank. LangChain’s early-career Deployed Engineer application, for one, asks you to describe customer-facing experience and tells new or recent graduates they may cite leadership, teaching or other people-facing experience. Source 8Application formPublisherLangChain (Ashby job board)Source typecompany job posting Fill it with one story, not a blank. Our post on FDE application questions covers the written answers.

Prove it in the room

A resume line opens the door; the interview checks it. Write your first customer line tonight. Then test it: our Pro lesson on the double bar shows which half you are weaker on, technical depth or trust in front of a customer, using a scored case run. Pro opens every lesson and all 180 questions with model answers, including the recruiter and hiring-manager questions this post draws on, and it starts with a 7-day free trial. Start the free trial.

GlossaryForward deployed engineerA software engineer who builds and ships production systems inside a customer’s problem and environment, accountable to that customer’s outcome.More on Forward deployed engineerGlossaryForward deployed software engineerPalantir’s title for its FDE role, called Delta internally; OpenAI and EY also post FDSE titles, each with its own duties.More on Forward deployed software engineer

Questions people ask

Do you need customer-facing experience to become a forward deployed engineer?

Not always. Leo Mehr, Ramp’s director of engineering, wrote in August 2025 that prior customer-facing experience helps but is not necessary, and that former instructors and teaching assistants who enjoyed it have the ability and interest to handle customers. Other postings do ask for it, including Anthropic’s and Cursor’s FDE postings, so read each one.Source 1Forward Deployed EngineerPublisherCursor (Ashby job board)Source typecompany job postingSource 2Forward Deployed Engineering (Leo Mehr, Director, Engineering)PublisherRamp Builders (engineering blog)Source typecompany blogSource 3Forward Deployed Engineer (New York City, NY; San Francisco, CA; Seattle, WA)PublisherAnthropic (Greenhouse job board)Source typecompany job posting

What counts as customer-facing experience on an FDE application?

Employers name several kinds. LangChain’s early-career Deployed Engineer application tells new or recent graduates they may cite leadership, teaching or other people-facing experience, and ElevenLabs’ FDE postings accept customer work from student clubs or side projects. Ramp’s director of engineering has named being a teaching assistant as one signal, and a people-facing job such as cashier or sales, paired with a public technical project, as a great example.Source 7Forward Deployed Engineer - Software Engineer - North America @ ElevenLabsPublisherElevenLabs (Ashby job board)Source typecompany job postingSource 8Application formPublisherLangChain (Ashby job board)Source typecompany job postingSource 9What is a Forward Deployed Engineer? (FDE Explained) feat. Leo Mehr of Ramp (YouTube auto-generated English captions)PublisherdearCC (Clara Shih), YouTubeSource typerecorded talk or interview

How do I answer ‘what customer-facing experience do you have?’ if I have none?

Name one person or group who depended on your work, what they needed, what you did and how you knew it worked. An internal team that used your tool counts if you worked with them directly. Do not stretch it into a client relationship you did not have.

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