PostHog Handbook Library / Forward Deployed Engineering

473 words. Estimated reading time: 3 min.

# Forward deployed engineering overview

Forward deployed engineering (FDE) is PostHog's team of engineers embedded with customers to get their implementation right. Depending on the engagement, that might mean hands-on work in their codebase (migration, instrumentation, dashboards, experiments) or it might mean getting their foundations right and enabling their team without ever touching code.

What makes this different from professional services is that every engagement compounds. The patterns we see across customers become reusable artifacts, skills, and product improvements that benefit the next customer and the broader PostHog user base.

FDE isn't just technical execution. AI made generating code easy, so the value we add is judgement: prioritizing for our team and the customer, helping them find the root of their problem, then planning and executing the best solution that fits their culture.

We sit between the customer, sales and CS, and product engineering. See how we work for how we operate day to day.

### What an FDE is

We don't maintain a fixed list of services. If solving a customer's problem produces something reusable, we're interested in seeing if we can help. In practice, that often looks like:

- Help customers design and implement PostHog for their specific stack, scale, and use cases
- Unblock technical adoption: instrumentation, data modeling, migrations, and integrations
- Build reference implementations, examples, and internal tooling that make future engagements faster
- Feed real customer problems back into the product via our product engineering teams

### What an FDE isn't

- Support. We have an amazing Support team who provide deep technical insight and fixes issues day-to-day, but they have to move fast from customer to customer. FDE work is higher-touch, tied to a specific customer outcome, and designed to leave something reusable behind.
- Sales, success, or account management. Your TAM or CSM owns the commercial relationship, we're embedded on the technical side for scoped engagements.
- Product engineering. Our focus is work that compounds across customers and engagements, not owning product direction, though the insights we surface help our team prioritize.

### When FDE gets involved

The FDE team is small, so we're deliberate about where we spend time. Typical triggers:

- A high-value prospect or customer has a technical blocker to adoption or expansion
- A complex implementation, migration, or integration that benefits from hands-on engineering
- A repeatable technical problem worth solving once and templating for everyone

### Who to talk to

If you have a customer who might need FDE help, or you're trying to figure out whether something fits, the fastest path is to talk to the team directly. Bring the customer, the product area, and a one-line description of what they're trying to do. That's enough for us to tell you whether it's FDE-shaped and what happens next. If you're routing something formally from sales, CS, or engineering, the full intake path is in how to get an FDE involved.

Canonical URL: https://posthog.com/handbook/forward-deployed-engineering/overview

GitHub source: contents/handbook/forward-deployed-engineering/overview.md

Content hash: `4144401eecfd63ff`

Static reader notes

- `MDX_COMPONENT_STATIC_ADAPTER`: Adapted interactive MDX components for static reading: SmallTeam.