Forward deployed engineers came up all day at ELEVATE 2026, the customer value event Ecosystems co-hosts with TSIA. Chad Quinn, CEO and Co-Founder of Ecosystems, asked the room how many companies had studied the Palantir model, then noted that "most of our study has been from the outside looking in."
Siddhant Ekale, Senior Architect at Palantir, gave the inside view. Sid has spent seven years at the company. He started as a forward deployed engineer, or FDE, in post-sales and now works in pre-sales.
Palantir's setup is unusual: it hires field engineers to the same technical bar as product engineers. What travels to a typical GTM team is how Palantir picks problems, who it puts in the room, and how it scopes a week of work.
What Do Forward Deployed Engineers Do at Palantir?
Palantir's forward deployed engineers find a valuable problem at the customer and build the solution with them. "The hiring process for a forward deployed engineer and a software product engineer at Palantir is the exact same," Sid said. The difference is temperament. FDEs want to be in the field "building specific things for a specific customer," and people move between field and product in both directions.
Palantir has built what Sid called primitives, reusable building blocks that apply to customers from commercial to defense. When FDEs build something new in the white space at a customer, the useful pieces become new primitives in the product.
Palantir starts from one question, Sid said: "what's the biggest problem that I can solve." Solving it changes "the customer's bottom line" and "the ambition of what they could achieve." Chad asked whether that makes Palantir's on-site bootcamp "an R&D scouting engine dressed in sales clothes." Sid agreed, calling it "more engineering heavy."
How a Palantir Bootcamp Works
A bootcamp puts FDEs at the customer's site for a few days to a week to find a problem worth solving and show progress on it. Customers often don't know exactly what they need, so discovery is part of the work, and the contract follows from what the bootcamp finds.
Sid said three groups need to be in the room. The first is a change leader who knows a process is broken. The second is the people who will use what gets built: someone on a manufacturing shop floor, someone running inventory management workflows, or a scientist working on drug discovery. The third is the customer's IT team, or an AI transformation team embedded in the business.
Early bootcamps were mostly free, when Palantir was picking where to go. Now that the program is "a really big operation," Palantir sometimes asks for "skin in the game" to qualify the opportunity. Sid wouldn't share figures; the payment shows the customer is "invested to see this process through." Otherwise, he said, "I'm going to come in and do a sales cycle for you."
Why Palantir Qualifies Out
Saying no keeps FDEs on problems that change a customer's bottom line. Sales and FDEs decide together whether a bootcamp is worth running. Another chatbot usually isn't. A process like order to cash might be, if the team can automate the mundane parts, reach the right stakeholders, and confirm the problem matters enough.
Chad pointed out how different that is from traditional discovery, which tends to continue no matter what. Sid said it's "immediately evident" whether a problem is worth the effort, because "more often than not, you're connected to the wrong stakeholders entirely." The CFO matters for signing the deal, but the subject matter experts (SMEs) who own the workflow matter for the work. Adoption is "somewhat of a flaky metric," he admitted, but if it's driving value for the SMEs during the bootcamp, "the monetary part of it follows."
How Do You Get Through Security Review Without Losing Momentum?
Lower the risk of the first step, and bring a technical architect. Sid named a few levers. Make sure your code won't break the customer's systems, which takes rigorous engineering. Work from data extracts, even a CSV file, before connecting to source systems. Use stand-in data when there's PII the customer doesn't trust you with yet.
Standard compliance documents don't get past "a discerning technical eye," he said, so part of his job is translating Palantir's building blocks into terms a security reviewer can check. That full review comes "immediately post the boot camp," once the talk has turned to procurement and a pilot.
Gravel Roads, Paved Roads, and the Product Roadmap
Custom work for one customer is fine if it's built to last. Chad called a new use case from a bootcamp a gravel road. Sid said it "needs to be a paved road at the customer specifically," not "a highway across every customer," and paving it into the product is a product manager's call.
FDEs make the case for paving, because "the PM isn't going to listen to a salesperson," Sid said. The engineers who saw the workflow carry it back and negotiate. A feature that could "unlock three hundred customers in the future" gets built; one that applies to five customers usually stays a one-off.
Some companies, Sid said, take solutions architects and rebrand them as forward deployed engineers without the same technical bar. Others relabel configuration as development. If all you're doing at a customer is configuring your product, "you're not building anything compounding for the enterprise," he said.
Sid's advice was to treat the first problem as a lily pad. Once you're working with the customer, be a thought partner and earn the right to build what the company needs next.
How Fast Should You Prove Value?
Within days, if the problem is scoped right. Sid said a bootcamp should show value in "days to a week at top," since anything longer is pilot work. If it takes longer, "maybe your product isn't there yet," though he allowed that companies at other stages "may have different views on this."
The way to fit a big goal into a week is what Palantir calls process decomposition. Supply chain companies want to improve OTIF (on time in full), which touches distribution, supply, and manufacturing. A person close to the business breaks that goal down, the engineer says what's technically feasible in a week, and together they pick a slice that's consequential and valuable to the SMEs.
A successful bootcamp usually leads to a pilot, and in many cases, Sid said, customers now go straight from bootcamp to an enterprise deal. Sid's test for a three-month pilot is whether it ends with a production-ready operational application. If it doesn't, "it was another longer bootcamp."
Where Does Professional Services Fit?
Palantir's FDEs do work that professional services would traditionally own, with more time spent discovering what to build. Asked in the Q&A whether FDEs replace professional services, Sid said "it's less implementation and less configuration." He looks for "high IQ, high EQ, high bar in technical talent, contrarian in thinking." The label may still be professional services, he said, but the people are "value engineers who are on the ground," "building solutions rather than deploying solutions."
Few GTM teams can hire engineers to Palantir's bar, but any team can agree on a specific outcome with the people who own the process. Ecosystems is built to hold that agreement and its proof, from the value case built with the buyer to the value measured after go-live.
Watch the Session
Watch Sid and Chad's full conversation, The Palantir Principle, from ELEVATE 2026. For the themes that ran through the whole day, read our ELEVATE 2026 recap, Closing the Promise Gap.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a forward deployed engineer?
A forward deployed engineer, or FDE, is a software engineer who works on site with a customer to find a valuable problem and build the solution. At Palantir, FDEs go through the same hiring process as product engineers. They differ mainly in temperament: FDEs want to build specific things for a specific customer in the field.
How long does a Palantir bootcamp last?
Siddhant Ekale, Senior Architect at Palantir, said a bootcamp should show value in a few days to a week. If it takes longer, the product may not be ready. Teams fit a big goal into that window by breaking it into a slice that's consequential, technically feasible in a week, and valuable to the people who own the process.
Does Palantir charge for bootcamps?
Sometimes. Early on, most Palantir bootcamps weren't paid. As the program grew, Palantir started asking some customers for skin in the game to qualify the opportunity. Palantir's Siddhant Ekale didn't share figures and said the amount isn't necessarily tied to the software's price. The payment shows the customer is invested in seeing the process through; without it, the bootcamp becomes another sales cycle.
How is an FDE different from professional services?
Traditional professional services usually implements or configures a defined solution. Palantir's FDEs spend more of their time discovering what else they can build for the customer. Palantir's Siddhant Ekale warned that relabeling configuration work as development misses the point, because configuration doesn't build anything compounding for the enterprise.
Keep the Conversation Going
The conversations that started at ELEVATE continue all year with peers who are solving the same problems. Join the Customer Value Community to be part of them. And if you'd like to see how teams use Ecosystems to agree on the outcome up front and prove it after the sale, book a demo.
