The Forward Deployed Engineer · Volume 1

Foundations: software, cloud, data and AI. Chapters 1–22.

The forward deployed engineer works where customers and code meet. Volume 1 builds the broad base the role demands: architecture, modern development, APIs, security, the three major clouds, Kubernetes, observability, cost, and the data and AI foundations every enterprise AI project rests on.

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What's inside

Part I — The Role and Its Roots 2 chapters

1The Forward Deployed Engineer
2A Short History: From Mainframes to Agents

Part II — Engineering Fundamentals 6 chapters

3Architecture and Design That Can Change
4Modern Development: Git, Testing, and AI Coding Assistants
5APIs, Integration, and Event-Driven Systems
6Distributed Systems, Databases, and Resilience
7Security and Enterprise Identity
8Field Basics: Linux, Shell, Networking, and Debugging

Part III — Cloud 9 chapters

9Cloud Fundamentals: What Every Cloud Shares
10AWS Essentials
11Microsoft Azure Essentials
12Google Cloud Essentials
13Cloud Networking, Hybrid, and On-Premises Connectivity
14Containers and Kubernetes
15Infrastructure as Code, CI/CD, and Platform Engineering
16Observability, SRE, and Performance
17Cloud Cost and FinOps

Part IV — Data and AI 5 chapters

18Data Platforms for AI: Lakehouse, Spark, Databricks, and Snowflake
19AI and LLM Foundations
20Working With Models: Prompting, Fine-Tuning, and Serving
21RAG and Enterprise Knowledge
22Document AI and Multimodal Systems

Appendices 6 items

AAWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Service Comparison
BCommand-Line Quick Reference
CTemplates for Field Engineering
DFurther Reading
Glossary
Index