Anjor Kanekar
I'm a computational physicist turned Forward Deployed Engineer. I spent 7 years at Palantir building and hiring FDE teams, and I write here about how that role actually works — and about doing real physics research again, this time with AI.
About Me
PhD in Computational Physics from the University of Maryland. I spent 7 years at Palantir as a Forward Deployed Engineer and hiring manager, conducted over 1,000 technical interviews, and trained hundreds of interviewers. Featured in The Pragmatic Engineer on how FDE organizations work.
I run Platypus Technologies, where I help companies decide whether they need FDEs and build the function properly when they do. The framework behind that work, the Platypus FDE Blueprint, is published free.
I recently rebuilt my plasma physics simulations with AI assistance and took them all the way to a publishable result — validating that AI amplifies expertise rather than replacing it. The paper is on GitHub along with the code. More on the research page.
Writing
Forward Deployed Engineering
The role is having a moment, and most of what's written about it is muddled. My running attempt to pin it down — whether you need the role, what it is, and the strategic fork AI has opened up — lives on the FDE page.
- If LEGO Had Forward Deployed Engineers — What actually makes an FDE different from a really good consultant
- The FDE Fork: Platform or Outcomes — The strategic choice founders don't realise they're making
- Is FDE a Bubble? — The title is spreading faster than the reasoning behind it
- The FDE Manifesto — What the role is for, and why most companies get it wrong
AI + Physics Research
- A Week in Vienna — What I learned returning to a plasma-physics working meeting after twelve years
- AI as the Undergrad Researcher — A real physics result, two months, one person
- The Autonomy Gradient — What AI can and can't do in physics research
- Writing a Physics Paper with Claude — Workflow, iterations, and hallucinations caught in review
Hiring & Organizations
- The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Hiring Assholes — Why conviction and ego are separate traits
- Context Matters: Hiring is Not Fungible — Why generic hiring processes fail
- Comand AI: A Hiring Case Study — How we designed hiring for mission-driven engineers
Work With Me
- Build or fix an FDE function → Platypus Technologies. Start with the two-week assessment: a written readout of where you sit against the Blueprint, what is wrong with the plan, and what to change in the next ninety days.
- Speak to your team or portfolio → the talks page. Panels, roundtables, and sessions for leadership teams and investors.