FDE: The $1M/Year AI Job Explained

Synopsis

Vas from Varick Agents (a forward-deployed engineering firm) breaks down the AI FDE role, tracing it to Palantir's on-site engineers who customise ontology per client, and argues that with frontier intelligence now commoditised, the edge lives in deployment. He lays out the audit to evals to deployment loop, the engineering-plus-consulting judgment the role demands (pay up to $1M/yr), how to choose an LLM, and a 30-day plan to ship a production-grade agent.

Ideas in this episode

• AI readiness / implementation consulting for SMBs

  Vas's AI-FDE playbook shows a packaged audit-to-eval-to-deployment service in which engineering and consulting judgment matter more than access to frontier models alone.