A practice prompt we wrote. No company or candidate report names it, so it carries no company tag.
How to answer
Nabeel Qureshi, a former Palantir , said in a May 2025 interview on Lenny’s Podcast, YouTube, that Palantir screened hard for people who weren’t afraid to push back; he meant company-wide hiring, not FDE hiring. Source 1How Palantir built the ultimate founder factory | Nabeel S. Qureshi (YouTube uploaded en-US captions)PublisherLenny's Podcast, YouTubeSource typerecorded talk or interview First Round Review reported, in February 2026, that Shilpa Balaji, who joined Palantir as an FDE and went on to lead its FDE recruiting, saw a candidate who came in overly dogmatic or set in their ways as a red flag for an FDE. Source 2So You Want to Hire a Forward Deployed EngineerPublisherFirst Round ReviewSource typenews report You need both: the argument, and stopping once the call was made.
- The decision and your position. What was decided, by whom, and what you argued for.
- How you disagreed. In the room, before the decision, with your reasoning, not in the hallway.
- Why you lost. What the decider weighed that you hadn’t. Say whether it was reasonable on what they knew, and why it was theirs: cost or speed, not safety, customer data or the law, which you’d have escalated.
- What committing looked like. Actions, not attitude: you built it as your own, explained it to the customer without “I argued against this”, and agreed with the decider, there and then, the signal and date for a second look.
- What happened, and what you learned. If it worked, what you misjudged. If it didn’t, how you reopened it: with the data, at that checkpoint.
Say one act of commitment aloud: “When the customer’s operations lead asked why we were launching with only the intake forms, I gave my director’s reasons, not mine.” Could anyone watching have told you disagreed?
The traps: compliance dressed as commitment, a disagreement too small to matter, and a story you later won. If you were right, skip the triumph and say how you raised it again. If you were wrong, say so; that is the stronger story.
Follow-ups
What the interviewer may ask next, once your first answer is on the table.
- How would the person who made the call describe how you behaved in the weeks after?
- What would have made you escalate instead of committing?
- If it had started to fail, how would you have raised it again?
Where answers go wrong
- Describes compliance, not commitment, such as doing the minimum, telling people “I argued against this”, or slowing the work while waiting to be proved right.
- Picks a disagreement they later won, so the answer turns into vindication and the committing part shrinks to a sentence.
- Picks a disagreement about taste, such as a library or a naming convention, so committing cost nothing.
Answer this in two minutes
Write the answer you would say out loud. The clock starts with your first word.
Illustrative answer about a fictional project
I was the FDE on a six-week pilot of our field-service assistant at a regional elevator maintenance company. Technicians asked it questions on their phones, and it answered from documents.