CLIENT-FACING ROLES

FDE vs sales engineer

Quick answer

A sales engineer proves the product can fit; an FDE makes it fit and keeps it running.

	SALES ENGINEER	FORWARD DEPLOYED ENGINEER
MAIN OUTPUT	Technical proof during the sales cycle	A working deployment inside one customer's systems
CLIENT TIME	Similar, earlier in the deal than an FDE	High: discovery, demos and handover every week
WRITES PRODUCTION CODE	Rarely	Yes
PAY	See FDE salary in India for bands by experience and city.

The default language of data, integrations and LLM tooling.

Automated checks that prove your code still works after a change.

Automated build, test and release pipelines.