The forward deployed engineer case interview, worked through

What it is

A vague problem, a fixed time, no right answer

Palantir created the format and calls it the open-ended round. An interview guide republished by Harvard career services describes it as an ambiguous enterprise problem. It says jumping to a solution before scoping is the most common reason candidates are rejected.

Interviewers score how you think: whether you clarify, name assumptions, split the problem, order the work by risk and propose a thin first version.

Worked example: "A hospital wants to cut discharge delays with AI"

Start by clarifying. "Is the goal fewer hours between the doctor's discharge decision and the patient leaving, or more beds free by midday? Which wards? Is there a baseline?" Assume the answer is the median discharge delay on the surgical wards, tracked by hand today.

Next, people and inputs. The users are charge nurses and case managers. The data is the EHR discharge order times, pharmacy fulfilment times, transport requests and bed management logs. Say out loud that EHR access will be the slowest thing to get, and that patient data rules apply.

Then split and sequence. The first workstream is a reliable timeline of each discharge from the existing systems. The next is a view that flags which step is blocking each pending discharge. Later comes an LLM that drafts discharge paperwork. Do the timeline first, because without trustworthy times nothing else can be measured.

Then the walking skeleton: a read-only export of discharge events for one ward, and a simple board showing each patient's blocking step, reviewed daily with the charge nurse. Measure the median delay before and after. Name the failure modes: missing times, shift changes, staff ignoring the board.

Finish by hardening and extending. Add more wards, automate the feed, then test the paperwork drafting with an eval set reviewed by case managers before anyone relies on it.