This article collects candidate-reported interview experiences for OpenAI's Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) role, published on Aced (formerly Exponent). Compared with a standard SWE loop, the process is more focused: a one-week take-home, a live team discussion of that case study, and a separate AI-enabled coding screen. One candidate's take-home was building a semantic search setup over Amazon products for ChatGPT. Evaluation centered on clearly explaining decisions and tying them to customer needs. The coding round was an easy LeetCode-style problem, though candidates still had to discuss time complexity and memory. The author advanced to the onsite stage.

Key points

• OpenAI FDE interviews are more focused than standard SWE loops
• Core stages: one-week take-home plus live case discussion
• Sample task: semantic search over Amazon products for ChatGPT
• Evaluation emphasizes explaining decisions tied to customer needs
• Coding screen was easy but covered complexity; author reached onsite

Written by AI from the full original article.

• So You Want to Hire a Forward Deployed Engineer

  InsightFirst Round2026-02-24EN

  This First Round piece examines the forward deployed engineer (FDE), a role Palantir pioneered nearly two decades ago, and its resurgence at AI startups.

• The Pulse: Forward deployed engineering heats up again

  InsightThe Pragmatic Engineer2026-05-24EN

  Gergely Orosz reports that demand for forward deployed engineers (FDEs) is rising again.

• What I learned analyzing 1K forward deployed engineer jobs

  LearnBloomberry2025-11-18EN

  The author analyzed 1,000 forward deployed engineer job postings from Revealera and found the title covers three distinct roles: Builder FDEs who embed with customers writing production code (60%), rebranded sales…

• Why AI Compute Comes in Rectangles — Erik Bernhardsson, Modal CEO

  InsightLatent Space2026-10-22EN

  Elastic GPUs, sandbox growth, and the economics of the agent cloud

• What’s the Future of Vertical SaaS in an AGI World? Jamie Cuffe, CEO of Pace

  Podcast / talkSequoia Capital2026-10-28EN

  In this Sequoia Capital podcast, Pace CEO Jamie Cuffe explains how his company acts as an agentic process outsourcer for insurance, replacing traditional BPOs on mission-critical back-office work.

• How to hire a forward deployed engineer in 2026

  LearnParaform2026-04-22EN

  Paraform's guide to hiring forward deployed engineers (FDEs) in 2026 argues the role is distinct from software or solutions engineers because FDEs ship production code inside customer environments.