forward deployed engineer vs consultant • fde vs implementation consultant
Forward Deployed Engineer vs Consultant
Consultant bills hours against an SOW. FDE ships product that must run at customer #2. Meter is license/retention, not utilization. FDE can say no to bespoke that will not generalize.
| Dimension | Forward Deployed Engineer | Consultant |
|---|---|---|
| Lifecycle | FDE: post-sale until workflow runs | SE pre-sale / SA design / Consultant SOW |
| Writes prod code at customer | Yes - primary output | Rarely / demo / scoped only |
| Coding intensity | 75-80 | 35 (SA/SE), 45 (Impl) |
| Sales / quota / utilization | 15, no quota, no utilization | SE 75 quota 70/30, SA 65, Consultant 70-80% util |
| Owns prod outcome / paged | Yes - them | No - hands off |
| Scales by | Product - ships to customer #2 | Demos / reference arch / headcount |
| Reports to | Engineering / Product | Sales / Services P&L |