For decades, the prevailing wisdom in banking has been that scale and speed are mutually exclusive; in such a highly regulated space, technology tends to be slow-moving and governed by roadmaps, approvals, and waterfall planning. But through adopting an approach to software engineering called Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE), forward-thinking financial institutions (and the fintechs built to assist them) are reshaping that assumption.
Originally conceived as a kind of high-touch professional services model, FDE has matured into something far more strategic: a way for software companies to operationalize customization, reduce client risk, and accelerate innovation without sacrificing compliance or control. FDE essentially enhances the relationship element that exists between tech partners and the financial institutions they serve, and it’s happening not in the executive suite or innovation lab, but in the field embedded alongside customers.
Beginning at Palantir Technologies in the mid-2000s, the position of forward deployed engineer was built to address the needs of clients who needed engineers to work directly with them in the field. These engineers needed to balance a deep understanding of their clients’ tech stacks, while also tailoring their counsel to their distinct business needs. This led to an organization of engineers who offered distinct counsel on:
In the years since, the obvious value-add for integrating the role has expanded it to various sectors, including SaaS, healthcare, and energy – any industry dealing with complex tech stacks and, increasingly, an eye for implementing AI technology.
However, the FDE model has been conspicuously absent when it comes to technology companies working with the over 8,000 community banks and credit unions in the U.S.
Ryan Siebecker, who helped pioneer the FDE model at Narmi, recalls its beginnings here: the traditional approach – collect a client’s request, route it through product, maybe see it show up on the roadmap six months later – wasn’t always cutting it. “FDE came out of a need to move faster,” Siebecker explained. “Sometimes our customers get so excited about the roadmap, it sparks an idea they’d like to see actioned quickly.”
Rather than spinning up costly consulting engagements, Narmi began embedding engineers directly with clients. Having significant experience working with customers constrained by limited in-house engineering resources, FDE became, in essence, an extension of our clients’ own teams. The partnership model has expanded since, with FDE distilling community financial institution needs while bringing wide-ranging regulatory and technical expertise from an array of client engagements to bear. That’s particularly useful in community banking, where no two tech stacks are quite the same.
“FDE doesn’t dilute the roadmap. It protects it,” Siebecker explained. “Our core product stays focused, while FDE handles edge cases with speed.”
The banking industry is becoming increasingly API-first. But in practice, most FIs still struggle to make third-party integrations seamless. The data is there. The endpoints exist. But stitching it all together remains deeply non-trivial. And as Garret Andreine, fellow Forward Deployed Engineer at Narmi, recently put it: “Just because you have an API doesn’t mean integration is easy.”
In this context, FDE’s role is as an activator of the potential for APIs. They write the glue code, the workflows, the infrastructure that turns abstract connectivity into business outcomes.
“Software companies are expected to do more now,” said Andreine. “FDE means clients don’t have to hire consultants or write one-off code to make things work.” And working within Narmi’s modular and extensible platform allows our FDEs to build for one client while simultaneously iterating on these same functionalities for others; a kind of adaptability that simply isn’t possible within legacy cores or brittle vendor stacks.
Siebecker refers to this as “Generation 3.5” of digital banking: platforms that are open and iterative, but also secure and scalable. Working within this model, forward deployed engineering isn’t an afterthought or workaround; it’s the mechanism that enables personalization at scale.
FDEs operate within the same ecosystem – technical, regulatory, and operational – as the rest of the platform, and are familiar with the constraints that community banks and credit unions face every day. That has real risk-mitigating power: “We know the platform, we know the customers, we know the compliance context,” said Siebecker. “We’re simply better positioned to deliver custom work safely and effectively.”
For example, when interest rates spiked and financial institutions were inundated with CD renewals, Narmi’s FDE team built a self-service CD management interface in a matter of days, the kind of responsiveness that can be a key differentiator when layered over the traditional product cycle. And while much of FDE’s work today is reactive – building what clients ask for – the opportunity ahead is proactive: pursuing strategic conversations and knowledge of market signals to surface ideas before they’re formally requested. “FDE doesn’t dilute the roadmap. It protects it,” Siebecker explained. “Our core product stays focused, while FDE handles edge cases with speed.”
Some of the most compelling FDE work happens quietly for financial institutions like Houston Police Federal Credit Union, where Narmi FDEs helped automate processes around new member bonus transactions, e-statement enrollment, and courtesy pay configurations. This led to less manual overhead, fewer errors, more responsive service, and a leadership team now actively engaged in surfacing new opportunities for custom engineering.
"I calculated and this automation saves us 27 clicks per each account processed." Darlene Davis, Chief Operating Officer at Houston Police Credit Union
Another recent success story lies with Clark County Credit Union, based in Las Vegas, Nevada. After a series of initial conversations during implementation, it was clear that the credit union needed a series of customizations to tailor Narmi’s tech stack to the unique needs of their members. Running in partnership with our Implementations team, our forward deployed engineers built a Narmi-record 14 Narmi Functions for them, including:
And our investment in FDE has garnered widespread interest, both internally and with customers:
The forward deployed engineering model is quickly becoming the connective tissue between platform vision and client reality, and it's time that this paradigm shift occurs in community banking. In our experience offering this expertise, it’s clear that financial institutions accustomed to rigid tech stacks from cores or legacy providers are unaware of the questions they’re even allowed to ask of their vendor.
But for the ones that embrace it, FDE isn’t just an engineering philosophy; it’s a strategic advantage.
