u/Expensive-Luck-284 — reddlx

Spent weeks building a niche SaaS, got ~5 visitors a day. Published one data report and traffic 5x'd off two Reddit posts. Here's the tactic (and the honest catch)

Quick build-in-public story with a tactic you can steal.

I built rungcode.io, prep for the "Forward Deployed Engineer" interview (a niche but fast-growing AI role). Classic mistake: I overbuilt the product. Real code editor, SQL sandbox, an AI mock interviewer, 115 problems, billing, 2FA, the works. Then I launched and got ~5 visitors a day for weeks. The product was way ahead of its distribution.

Instead of building another feature, I tried something different: I made original data. I pulled every open Forward Deployed Engineer job I could find from public job boards (Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby), 292 roles across 11 companies, and analyzed who's hiring, what they pay, and what the interviews actually test. Published it as a free report.

Result: traffic 5x'd off two Reddit posts, and the engagement was wild, 7 to 13 minute average sessions, people reading the whole thing and clicking into the app. The lesson that finally clicked: original data is the single most shareable and linkable content type there is. People upvote and cite data. Nobody links your landing page.

The honest catch (this is the part most "growth" posts skip): that first spike got me zero signups. The traffic was mostly mobile Reddit curiosity, not buyers, and they physically can't start a coding session on their phone. So volume without intent converts terrible. I added an email capture (trade an email for the raw dataset) so the next spike leaves something behind, and I'm now leaning on higher-intent channels.

Takeaways if you're pre-traction:

If you're getting ignored, the problem is almost never the product. Stop building. Distribution is the job.
Make original data in your niche and lead with that, not your features.
Pair it with a capture/convert mechanism, because curiosity clicks won't sign up, but they'll give you an email or feedback.

Happy to share the report or the tool if it's useful. And since I'm hunting for real feedback: I opened 30 days of full Pro free to the first 100 people, code LAUNCH3 on the pricing page. Poke at it and tell me what's broken, I genuinely want to know.

u/Expensive-Luck-284 — 2 days ago

▲ 0 r/csMajors

There's an AI role paying $200K to $390K that most CS majors sleep on. I pulled the data on 292 open jobs.

Everyone here is grinding for the same SWE and ML roles, but there's one that's

exploding right now and barely comes up: the Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE). I

got curious and pulled every open FDE role I could find from public job boards.

292 of them, across 11 companies. Here's what stood out, especially if you're a

student or new grad.

The basics:

- It pays like senior SWE. Median disclosed US band was $197K to $294K, up to

$390K plus equity at OpenAI and Sierra.

- It's booming. Palantir has 95 open, Databricks 85, OpenAI 70, plus Cohere,

Scale AI, Sierra, and more.

- It's more accessible than you'd think. 62% of the roles are mid-level or IC,

and it self-selects hard because most engineers avoid it (more below).

Why it might fit you specifically:

- If you're a strong builder who can also talk to people but you're not a

competitive-programming god, this is one of the few high-paying tech roles

that rewards that combo. The interviews lean less on LeetCode puzzles and more

on real coding, SQL, and an open-ended customer case where you scope a vague

problem out loud.

- The catch, and it's real: 98% of these roles are customer-facing. That's the

whole job, not a tax on it. If sitting across from a customer sounds miserable,

skip it. If it sounds kind of fun, you're exactly who they're fighting to hire.

One practical tip from the data: the role has no standard title. It shows up as

Forward Deployed Engineer, Deployment Strategist, and AI Deployment Engineer. If

you only search one, you miss most of the market.

reddit.com

u/Expensive-Luck-284 — 3 days ago

▲ 23 r/SoftwareEngineerJobs+1 crossposts

I counted every open Forward Deployed Engineer job I could find. Here's what they pay and require.

I pulled every open Forward Deployed Engineer job I could find. 292 of them,

across 11 companies. Here's what the data says.

Who's hiring: Palantir leads with 95 openings (they coined the title), then

Databricks 85, OpenAI 70, then Cohere, Scale AI, Sierra, Writer, and more.

What it pays: a median band of $197K to $294K, topping out at $390K plus equity.

Senior-engineer money for a role most people have never heard of.

Three things that surprised me:

98% are customer-facing. This is the whole job, not a backend role with

occasional meetings.
The title is chaos. FDE, Deployment Strategist, AI Deployment Engineer,

Forward Deployed Software Engineer. Same job, 5 names. Search one, miss most.
The job descriptions barely mention SQL or algorithms, but the interviews

absolutely test them. The JD sells the breadth; the loop tests the depth.

62% of these roles are mid-level IC, so you don't need to be a staff engineer

to break in. Full breakdown with every number in the comments.

reddit.com

u/Expensive-Luck-284 — 3 days ago

▲ 0 r/blueteamsec

Extended Cyber Kill Chain for AI-Era Threats: a defender-side framework mapping LLM and agentic attacks to kill-chain stages (MITRE ATLAS + OWASP LLM Top 10 mappings)

github.com

u/Expensive-Luck-284 — 2 months ago