# Zip has split the Forward Deployed Engineer role in two, and hires for each on the skill that is hardest to teach > One listing asks how many years you have spent in a procurement team. The other asks which systems you have taken to production. Apply through the wrong door and even a strong CV will struggle to get past screening. Original: https://fdetimes.net/en/analysis/zip-two-forward-deployed-engineer-roles/ Zip is hiring an AI Forward Deployed Engineer, and the requirement that defines the listing has nothing to do with code. Candidates need at least 3 years in procurement, finance operations or a comparable function at a large company. The same company's listing for a Software Engineer, Forward Deployed turns on a thoroughly engineering requirement: you must have taken genuinely complex production systems into operation. Both carry the words "Forward Deployed", but one screens for domain knowledge first and the other for technical ability first. If you are targeting Zip, or any enterprise SaaS company that hires FDEs along two tracks, the first job is to work out which door suits you. Each one expects you to arrive with something that is hard to teach, and it is a different thing in each case. Zip makes procurement software: systems that manage how companies buy and spend. The people Zip's FDEs have to win over are the AP director (accounts payable, the team that pays suppliers), the chief procurement officer (CPO) and the chief financial officer (CFO). It is this group that determines what kind of FDE Zip needs. ## Why does the AI role favour domain experts over strong coders? The answer lies in what an FDE in this role actually builds. According to VentureBeat, Zip builds its agents on a no-code platform that enterprise customers can tailor to their own needs. Zip describes each agent as something close to a junior employee, very good at following specific instructions. Those two details show where the hard part of the job really sits. If the platform needs no code and the agent does exactly what it is told, quality depends on whoever writes the instructions. That person has to know what the real process looks like, where the exceptions occur and which steps need human approval. Imagine an AP director complaining that invoices from one group of suppliers keep getting stuck at the approval step. An engineer who has never worked in a finance team will go and read the logs. Someone who has reconciled invoices will ask first: on which line do these invoices differ from the purchase order, and under company policy, who is allowed to override that discrepancy? The second kind of question explains why the listing demands enough domain knowledge to quickly earn the trust of an AP Director, CPO or CFO. Buyers at that level rarely have time to teach the trade to the person sent to help them. That is why Zip sets the technical bar at handling integrations, reading API documentation and finding where a workflow breaks, rather than designing distributed systems. One detail in the listing is easy to skim past. Candidates must have built agents or automated workflows for their own work. The wording shows that what is being assessed is hands-on evidence: you spotted a repetitive task in your own working day and automated it. Professional certifications, by contrast, are explicitly optional. CPP, CPSM, CPA or equivalent are only a plus. People in finance ops do not need to go back to study for a certificate; the years of real work are what count. ## In the SWE role, engineers still have to talk to customers The second role looks more familiar to software engineers. According to Zip, the Forward Deployed Software Engineering team owns and ships high-impact full-stack features that customers use directly. The technical requirement is to have taken complex production systems into operation and to be able to work across the full stack. The listing gives a base salary of $150,000 to $250,000. The figure may vary between sites that repost the listing, so check it against Zip's official careers page before using it for comparison. But anyone who reads this as a renamed backend role has misread it. The listing states plainly that you will speak to customers directly. You join calls with procurement, finance and IT teams, and diagnose problems while still on the call. Diagnosing problems live on a call is a skill many good engineers have never practised. You have to state hypotheses out loud, ask questions the customer can actually answer and be clear about what you are not yet sure of. If you are used to debugging alone and reporting back later, this is where you need the most practice. The listing asks for one more thing: product sense. The ideal candidate is sketched as the person on their current team who tends to push back on requirements that have not been properly scoped. That detail shows Zip does not want people who simply pick up tickets and work through them. ## What do the two roles have in common? So what makes a finance professional and an engineer share the title FDE? One line in the AI FDE listing gives a fairly clear answer. Candidates must have a track record of owning complex customer engagements from scoping through to handover. Put that line next to the SWE role's demand for pushing back on vague scope, and the two listings are saying the same thing. **Key point:** FDEs are hired for their willingness to take ownership, not just for having the right background. This is what the two roles share, and it is also the hardest thing to prove on a CV. Writing that you know Python or understand procure-to-pay is easy. It is much harder to point to a time you took a vague request, narrowed it down and carried it through to something that worked without anyone supervising you. ## Which role should you prepare for? If you are a software engineer who has never worked in a finance team, the SWE role sits closer to your strengths, especially as the listing is open to all levels. Do not try to pass yourself off as a procurement expert: a requirement of 3 years in the field cannot be made up with a course. Put your effort into the two things the listing assesses: working directly with customers, and product sense. The practice is concrete. Next time your team receives a vague request, rewrite the scope in a few sentences, state clearly what will not be done, and send it back to whoever made the request. On a CV, a line such as "narrowed the original request to a single approval flow, shipped the first version after X weeks" is worth more than a list of frameworks. If you work in finance ops, AP or procurement and can code at the level of writing scripts, the AI FDE role was all but written for you. What you need to add is evidence of agents. Automate a real task from your daily work, and record where it broke and how you fixed it, because that is precisely the workflow-debugging skill the listing asks for. If you sit between the two, say an engineer who has worked on payment systems or an internal ERP, write a separate CV for each role rather than sending one generic application. Send the same CV to both and the reader will struggle to see where you are strongest. Zip's two-role model shows that the FDE is not a fixed profile. Companies hire people who arrive with exactly the part that is hardest to teach, and leave the teachable part to be learned on the job. **Try this week:** - Pick a repetitive task in your work, such as reconciling invoices or compiling expense reports, then build an agent or automated workflow for it and note the step at which it first went wrong. - Open the API documentation of a public accounting or ERP system and map the path of a purchase request, from the moment someone raises it to payment, marking the integration points that could fail. - Rewrite one CV line using the pattern 'original scope → what you pushed back on or narrowed → what was handed over' for a project you saw through from start to finish. ## Sources - [AI Forward Deployed Engineer – Zip (SV Angel job board)](https://jobs.svangel.com/companies/zip/jobs/79885481-ai-forward-deployed-engineer) - [Software Engineer, Forward Deployed (All Levels) – Zip (Built In Chicago)](https://www.builtinchicago.org/job/software-engineer-forward-deployed-all-levels/9633543) - [Zip debuts 50 AI agents to kill procurement inefficiencies, OpenAI is already on board (VentureBeat)](https://venturebeat.com/ai/zip-debuts-50-ai-agents-to-kill-procurement-inefficiencies-openai-is-already-on-board)