The Impact of Forward Deployed Engineers

Nabeel Qureshi is an entrepreneur, writer, researcher, and visiting scholar of AI policy at the Mercatus Center (alongside Tyler Cowen). Previously, he spent nearly eight years at Palantir, working as a forward-deployed engineer. His work at Palantir ranged from accelerating the Covid-19 response to applying AI to drug discovery to optimizing aircraft manufacturing at Airbus. Nabeel was also a founding employee and VP of business development at GoCardless, a leading European fintech unicorn.

What you’ll learn:

• Why almost a third of all Palantir’s PMs go on to start companies

• How the “forward-deployed engineer” model works and why it creates exceptional product leaders

• How Palantir transformed from a “sparkling Accenture” into a $200 billion data/software platform company with more than 80% margins

• The unconventional hiring approach that screens for independent-minded, intellectually curious, and highly competitive people

• Why the company intentionally avoids traditional titles and career ladders—and what they do instead

• Why they built an ontology-first data platform that LLMs love

• How Palantir’s controversial “bat signal” recruiting strategy filtered for specific talent types

• The moral case for working at a company like Palantir

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Where to find Nabeel S. Qureshi:

• X: https://x.com/nabeelqu

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nabeelqu/

• Website: https://nabeelqu.co/

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Where to find Lenny:

• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com

• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/

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In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Introduction to Nabeel S. Qureshi

(05:10) Palantir’s unique culture and hiring

(13:29) What Palantir looks for in people

(16:14) Why they don't have titles

(19:11) Forward-deployed engineers at Palantir

(25:23) Key principles of Palantir's success

(30:00) Gotham and Foundry

(36:58) The ontology concept

(38:02) Life as a forward-deployed engineer

(41:36) Balancing custom solutions and product vision

(46:36) Advice on how to implement forward-deployed engineers

(50:41) The current state of forward-deployed engineers at Palantir

(53:15) The power of ingesting, cleaning and analyzing data

(59:25) Hiring for mission-driven startups

(01:05:30) What makes Palantir PMs different

(01:10:00) The moral question of Palantir

(01:16:03) Advice for new startups

(01:21:12) AI corner

(01:24:00) Contrarian corner

(01:25:42) Lightning round and final thoughts

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Referenced:

• Reflections on Palantir: https://nabeelqu.co/reflections-on-palantir

• Palantir: https://www.palantir.com/

• Intercom: https://www.intercom.com/

• Which companies produce the best product managers: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/which-companies-produce-the-best

• Gotham: https://www.palantir.com/platforms/gotham/

• Foundry: https://www.palantir.com/platforms/foundry/

• Peter Thiel on X: https://x.com/peterthiel

• Alex Karp: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Karp

• Stephen Cohen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Cohen_(entrepreneur)

• Joe Lonsdale on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jtlonsdale/

• Tyler Cowen’s website: https://tylercowen.com/

• This Scandinavian City Just Won the Internet With Its Hilarious New Tourism Ad: https://www.afar.com/magazine/oslos-new-tourism-ad-becomes-viral-hit

• Safe Superintelligence: https://ssi.inc/

• Mira Murati on X: https://x.com/miramurati

• Stripe: https://stripe.com/

• Building product at Stripe: craft, metrics, and customer obsession | Jeff Weinstein (Product lead): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/building-product-at-stripe-jeff-weinstein

• Airbus: https://www.airbus.com/en

• NIH: https://www.nih.gov/

• Jupyter Notebooks: https://jupyter.org/

• Shyam Sankar on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shyamsankar/

• Palantir Gotham for Defense Decision Making: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxKghrZU5w8

• Foundry 2022 Operating System Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uF-GSj-Exms

• SQL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQL

• Airbus A350: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A350

• SAP: https://www.sap.com/index.html

• Barry McCardel on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/barrymccardel/

• Understanding ‘Forward Deployed Engineering’ and Why Your Company Probably Shouldn’t Do It: https://www.barry.ooo/posts/fde-culture

• David Hsu on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dvdhsu/

• Retool’s Path to Product-Market Fit—Lessons for Getting to 100 Happy Customers, Faster: https://review.firstround.com/retools-path-to-product-market-fit-lessons-for-getting-to-100-happy-customers-faster/

• How to foster innovation and big thinking | Eeke de Milliano (Retool, Stripe): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-to-foster-innovation-and-big

• Looker: https://cloud.google.com/looker

• Sorry, that isn’t an FDE: https://tedmabrey.substack.com/p/sorry-that-isnt-an-fde

• Glean: https://www.glean.com/

• Limited Engagement: Is Tech Becoming More Diverse?: https://www.bkmag.com/2017/01/31/limited-engagement-creating-diversity-in-the-tech-industry/

• Operation Warp Speed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Warp_Speed

• Mark Zuckerberg testifies: https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-ceo-mark-zuckerberg-testifies-congress-libra-cryptocurrency-2019-10

• Anduril: https://www.anduril.com/

• SpaceX: https://www.spacex.com/

• Principles: https://nabeelqu.co/principles

• Wispr Flow: https://wisprflow.ai/

• Claude code: https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/agents-and-tools/claude-code/overview

• Gemini Pro 2.5: https://deepmind.google/technologies/gemini/pro/

• DeepMind: https://deepmind.google/

• Latent Space newsletter: https://www.latent.space/

• Swyx on x: https://x.com/swyx

• Neural networks in chess programs: https://www.chessprogramming.org/Neural_Networks

• AlphaZero: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaZero

• The top chess players in the world: https://www.chess.com/players

• Decision to Leave: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12477480/

• Oldboy: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0364569/

• Christopher Alexander: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Alexander

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Recommended books:

• The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West: https://www.amazon.com/Technological-Republic-Power-Belief-Future/dp/0593798694

• Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future: https://www.amazon.com/Zero-One-Notes-Startups-Future/dp/0804139296

• Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre: https://www.amazon.com/Impro-Improvisation-Theatre-Keith-Johnstone/dp/0878301178/

• William Shakespeare: Histories: https://www.amazon.com/Histories-Everymans-Library-William-Shakespeare/dp/0679433120/

• High Output Management: https://www.amazon.com/High-Output-Management-Andrew-Grove/dp/0679762884

• Anna Karenina: https://www.amazon.com/Anna-Karenina-Leo-Tolstoy/dp/0143035002

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Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.

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Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.

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