Hire a Head of FDE
The person who turns a few overstretched engineers into a real team. We find leaders who have built deployment teams before and still know how to do the work themselves.
Interviewing is free, and every hire comes with a 90-day replacement guarantee.
What a Head of FDE does day to day
Hire, level and grow FDEs, and define what great looks like.
Decide pod structure, coverage ratios and where FDEs sit in the customer journey.
Make deployments repeatable and feed what the team learns into the roadmap.
Answer for time to value, retention and expansion on deployed accounts.
Why hire your Head of FDE through us
Tested on the work and the customer
Every candidate passes a skills test for this role and a live role-play built around your own customer before they reach your interviews.
Run by a working FDE
Asher Cohen works as a Forward Deployed Engineer and is on every search. He knows which interview answers hold up once someone is on site with a real customer.
A short list with scorecards
You get a small set of candidates, each with a written scorecard from our tests. If we don't think someone would hold up in front of your customer, we don't send them.
Signs you need one
- You have three or more FDEs and nobody manages them full-time.
- Every deployment is done differently.
- Your FDEs are burning out or leaving.
- Leadership can't see what the FDE team is delivering.
What great looks like
- Has built or scaled a deployment team before.
- Can still go on site and do the work.
- Measures the team by what customers got out of each deployment.
- Hires people who are better than they are.
Running the interviews yourself?
Our hiring playbook has the scorecard, the customer role-play script and the interview questions we use on every candidate. You're welcome to use them in your own process.
Sample job description
A first draft to paste into your applicant tracking system and edit to fit your team.
About the role. You'll build and lead our Forward Deployed Engineering team as we scale from [N] to [N] customers.
You'll hire and develop FDEs, design how we deploy and partner with sales and product leadership.
You have experience leading a deployment, solutions or FDE team, and a background writing production code.
Questions about hiring a Head of FDE
Anything we haven't covered? Start a search and ask us on the first call, or email us at hello@embedhire.com.
Interviewing is free, and every hire comes with a 90-day replacement guarantee.
When should we hire a Head of FDE?
Usually around your third to fifth FDE, or earlier if your founders are still running deployments. The sign to watch for is that every deployment looks different and nobody owns fixing it. If you hire too early, there's no team to lead. If you hire too late, they spend their first year undoing habits instead of setting them.
Should they come from a big company?
Not necessarily. Someone who built a team from scratch often fits a startup better than someone who inherited a big one. We look at what they built, how they hired and whether they can still go on site and do the work.
How is this search run?
As a dedicated search. We start with calibration sessions with your leadership team and agree on the scorecard together. Then we approach leaders who aren't actively looking. Candidates design a deployment model for your business, and the customer role-play becomes an escalation they have to own. A Head of FDE who can't handle a customer can't teach anyone else to.
How long does it take to hire a Head of FDE?
Your first vetted shortlist arrives in under 5 days from kickoff. Everyone on it has passed our skills test and a role-play built around your customer. We aim to get you to a signed offer in 3–4 weeks. What usually decides the timeline is how quickly your team can run final interviews, so we take care of the scheduling to keep the search moving.
How do you vet candidates for this role?
We run two tests before you meet anyone. The first is a skills test for this role. For engineering roles that's a technical screen where they write working code against a messy API, and for strategists it's a business case. The second is a live role-play built around your own customer, which we design with you when we scope the role. You get a written scorecard for every candidate, and your team runs the final interviews.
Is it really free to interview?
Yes. You can meet everyone on your shortlist without committing to anything. If nobody clears your bar, we keep searching. Every hire comes with our 90-day replacement guarantee.
Will you push us to hire someone?
No. If a candidate does well on the skills test but struggles with the customer, we tell you, even if that means going back out to search. Any concerns we have go on the scorecard in writing. We'd rather you wait an extra week than hire the wrong person.
What if the hire doesn't work out?
If your hire leaves or isn't working out in the first 90 days, we find you a replacement. We run the search again using what we learned the first time, and every new candidate goes through the same tests.
See your first Head of FDE candidates in under 5 days
Interviewing is free, and every hire comes with a 90-day replacement guarantee.